


Any Storm Together

by contrequirose



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (s), (why am i writing this when i have so much other stuff?), Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Disabled Character, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Polyamory, Queerplatonic Relationships, caleb and beau focused, lots of headcanons, misuse of dnd mechanics, navigating life after trauma, reworked backstorys, slightly scandalous manipulations of geography
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2020-04-06 07:16:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19057858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/contrequirose/pseuds/contrequirose
Summary: Caleb Widogast, age twenty-four, currently a second-year student at the University of Zadash, lives in an apartment with probably too many other residents, a fey cat, and definitely too many houseplants.Beauregard, no last name that she cares about, age twenty-two, second-year student at the University of Zadash, lives in an apartment with her girlfriend, her girlfriend's dog, her girlfriend's weasel, and her girlfriend's boyfriend.It's going to be a long year.(freshly edited and checked over as of 1/21/2020!)





	1. Fall's End

**Author's Note:**

> hey folks! if you've read some of my other stuff, you'll understand what dynamic I'm trying to write here, and also just the sort of stuff i write in general. If you haven't, welcome to my world, where astrid and eodwulf and caleb (and caduceus because im soft) are in love, the archeart is the best, and i make All of the rules.
> 
> If that doesn't scare you away off the bat, enjoy!!!!!
> 
> i couldnt. i have so many other things im writing but i couldnt stop myself. im in too deep.

“Hey.”

Beau lifts her head from where she had burrowed into the couch cushions. She had come over about an hour ago, just to hang out, and had spent most of that time watching youtube on her phone while he worked on his essay.

“Caleb.”

He hums a little bit in response, and keeps typing.

“Caleb.”

He keeps typing.

She pokes him on the shoulder with her foot, and he pushes it away without turning around.

“Dude.”

“ Ja , Beauregard?” He finally turns around, and stretches out his fingers, wincing slightly at the pops that that motion creates.

“Did you read that article for Yussah’s class yet? I couldn’t figure out how it related to last week’s lecture.”

He frowns a bit, and tilts his head. “Isn’t that due next week? We haven’t started talking about conjuration theory yet, that’s the topic for this week.”

Beau raps her knuckles on the side of the couch, and thinks for a moment.

“Shit, you’re right.”

Silence reigns for a few moments.

Beau buries her head into the couch again, and when he glances over, there’s tension radiating throughout her whole body.

He closes out of the essay that he was working on – it's not due for a week yet, he’s fine – and turns the chair towards the couch.

“Are you alright, Beauregard?” He asks softly, and watches as Beau just shakes her head into the couch.

Frumpkin has been sleeping on his bed while Beau has been over, but with an unspoken command he comes padding over, jumping up to lie down and purr on Beau’s back.

She laughs, a tiny bit, and carefully sits up and positions Frumpkin in her lap.

He moves and sits next to her on the couch, and she leans against his shoulder once he’s sitting down.

She sighs.

“My parents –“

She stops, and swallows.

He brushes a thumb over her knee.

“My parents sent me another letter.”

Beau’s eyes are locked onto the ground in front of her, and she scrunches up her mouth into a frown.

“Do they want you to come home for winter break?” That had been the subject of the last letter, at least. He had been with her when she had sent back a paper with only the word no scrawled in shaky handwriting.

She nods.

“What did they –“

“The usual bullshit, about how they worry about the path I’m going down, whatever the fuck that means.”

He stays quiet for a moment, and the two of them listen to the muffled sounds of a police siren outside.

“Are you going to respond?”

She shakes her head against his shoulder.

“I just – I can’t – I won’t go back.”

She swipes at her face almost angrily, and continues.

“And Fjord and Jester are planning on going to Nicodranas over break, and they invited me but I really didn’t want to bother them by tagging along and I’m not going home, obviously, so it’s just going to be me, probably, and that’s fine, that’s great, I just –“

“I don’t think Jester and Fjord would be bothered, Beauregard. From what you’ve told me of them, they care for you very much.” he says softly.

“I know, I know.”

“But you are welcome to be here with Nott and I, over the holiday.”

He glances down at her, and catches a fleeting smile.

“Thanks, Caleb.”

He gives a small smile in return.

“Of course.”

There’s a pause, a long moment where his attention diverts back to his essay, before Beau sighs again. She leans back, head tilting over the edge of the couch, and groans dramatically at the ceiling.

“Could you – are the others going to be home soon?”

It’s only two thirty-four, and Wulf and Astrid aren’t going to be home until after five, after they both get home from work, and Yeza won’t be home until around the same time, after he picks up Luc from daycare, and Nott won’t be home until eight or later because she has said she was meeting up with her lab partner tonight. Caduceus had said he was meeting up with his friend Mollymauk for something, as well.

“Not for a few hours.”

“Oh.”

He watches as her brows furrow, and she picks at her fingernails.

“D’you want to come over to our apartment? Jester and Fjord are bringing some people over for game night, and I don’t – I don’t know them? and I don’t, you know, exactly love meeting new people.”

He leans in harder against her shoulder and knocks a gentle hand against her side. “Really? Could have fooled me.”

“Ha. Yeah. But really, do you want to come? Jester bought a new edition of Monopoly and Fjord wanted to watch that muppet version of A Winter’s Crest Carol.”

“Mm. The one with the singing?”

“Yeah.” She sighs, and stretches out over the back of the couch, leaning so that she’s hanging almost upside down. “I don’t even know why he likes it so much, Winter’s Crest isn't even celebrated here.”

“It’s probably the puppets.”

She laughs, snorting a little, and then he watches as her eyes widen as she falls in slow motion over the back of the couch, hands reaching down just in time to do a back handspring and stand upright, panting from the unexpected adrenaline.

“Ten out of ten, Beauregard,” he deadpans, and is rewarded with a double bird from his friend’s hands.

She leans over his head and wraps her arms around him, and he tolerates the touch with only a minor flinch that Beau doesn’t blink at. He trusts her, which is why she’s one of the short list of people allowed to touch him.

“I’m not the greatest at meeting new people either.”

A sigh, by his ear.

“Yeah. But I think – you need to meet Jester and Fjord eventually, you’ll love them. And I trust that whoever they’re bringing will be cool.”

He raps his fingers on his thigh, and eyes Frumpkin sleeping in his bed in the corner by the door, Caduceus’s spare cane leaned up against the coat tree, his own bag containing his inhaler and meds and wrist braces hung on one of the hooks.

“Can I bring Frumpkin?”

“Fjord’s super allergic to cats – like, super fucking allergic. You-having-an-asthma attack levels of allergic.”

He hums, in the back of his throat, and clicks his fingers to bring his cat to his lap. “He is not a cat, Beauregard. Just – cat shaped. Unless Fjord is actually allergic to the Feywild, he should not bother him.”

He stops, considering. “But if he is still allergic, I can snap him back here easily.”

“Yeah, that works.”

Frumpkin stretches, claws pricking into the skin of his thighs, under his jeans.

“Are we leaving, then?”

“Right.”

Beau blinks, and shifts back on her heels, coming around to stand by the door. She picks up his bag and hands it to him, and he slings it over his shoulder. She offers a hand, then, casually, and he smiles faintly as he uses the leverage to stand up, knees protesting the action.

It’s a fairly decent day, pain wise, but his joints, even at the best of times, have it out for him.

The walk to Beau’s apartment is a familiar one. He’s only been over a handful of times, and only when her roommates weren’t home, but it’s a nice apartment in a nice building, miles better than his own.

Though, to be fair, he lives in a three bedroom apartment with six other people. Most things are better than his apartment. If he really pressed, they could afford a larger one, but most of the money from the settlement went to medical bills and to a fund for Luc, for the future, and he could never regret that.

It was just – cheap, and had an elevator, and short counters for Nott and her husband, and enough windows for Wulf and later Caduceus to grow plants in the spaces not taken up by people.

Beau’s apartment, in contrast, is in a building that’s glowing softly from fairy lights affixed to the trees in front, and has a functional elevator, intercom system, and presumably an appropriate resident-to-bedroom ratio.

Frumpkin pads next to him, vest firmly affixed on his existence in this plane denoting him a registered familiar, and Beauregard lets them both into the building without issue, waving to the half-elven security guard as they walk in.

They have an actual security guard.

His apartment is mostly protected by the shit-ton of wards he and Astrid have etched into the rune stones they buried in the half-dead grass outside.

Not by – a security guard, and cameras, and other such things.

Strange.

The elevator up to the third floor is fast, clean and functional. Only one of those things can be said about the elevator in his own building.

He’s not – exceedingly nervous. He’s had a string of good days, this week, so things could be worse.

He’s anxious, which is usual. But he has Frumpkin with him, and Beauregard is here, so it’s –

Fine.

Beauregard pushes the door open and leads him in, toeing off her sneakers in the entryway as he crouches down unsteadily to untie and pull off his own ragged boots, leaving them next to a pile of shoes, a pair of combat boots that look strangely like Nott’s, and a pair of brilliantly decorated sneakers that he would almost swear were Caduceus’s.

Strange.

The shoes, though, make perfect sense when Beau leads him through the hallway and to her living room, and he spots Nott, mask across her face and hands raised, rolling a set of iridescent glittery dice with a flourish before looking up and half-shouting, half-whispering, “Caleb!”

He waves, confused, and glances around the room. There’s a blue tiefling on the opposite side of Nott – Jester, he assumes, and a half-orc next to her – Fjord. On another couch, tucked into the corner next to a basket full of pillows and blankets, is a vibrantly colored purple tiefling cuddled up in between a tall woman with hair dyed white in the end and – Caduceus, who gives him a slow smile as he stands in the entryway of the living room.

Jester’s head whips around, and she jumps off the couch, practically bouncing as she makes her way to Beauregard, pulling her down to give her a kiss on the cheek that Beauregard smiles at.

Beauregard jerks her head at him. “This is Caleb, we’ve been friends for ages.” She glances over to the couch, and blinks. “Nott, Caduceus, hey. Do you – you guys know Fjord and Jester?”

Jester blinks back. “You know Nott? She’s my chem lab partner! I don’t know Caduceus, though, because Fjord invited Mollymauk and then he invited Yasha and Caduceus.”

“Hey,” Caduceus waves, and Jester glances back and waves as well.

Well.

Obviously, he knows Nott, because she’s his best friend and they share an apartment, and he knows Caduceus, because he lives in the apartment as well and sleeps in his slightly-ridiculous mattress set up.

Only four new people to meet today, then.

Very well.

“Jester, I got double sixes again . Does that mean I go to jail, or do I win?” Nott all but shouts, and the tiefling’s attention is broken.

Jester whirls back and flips herself over the couch, landing and peering down at the monopoly board. “How did you roll doubles three times in a row – that is statistically! Unlikely!” She laughs, loud, and flips through the rule pamphlet wildly.

Nott goes to jail.

Fjord, upon seeing Frumpkin, sneezes once, out of instinct, but nothing else happens. He trails after them as Beau leads Caleb into the kitchen, and seats himself at the wooden table, carved with small decorative dicks along one edge.

Presumably where Jester sits. That is the – vibe, she gives off.

“Is that a, uh – a real cat, there?”

He blinks, and has Frumpkin come up to settle around his shoulders as a scarf. “No, he’s – are you not familiar –“ and he watches Beauregard’s face fall as he continues the pun, a low groan starting in the back of her throat, “- with familiars?”

Fjord blinks, and then gives him a slow smile. “No, I am, I just – they’re normally, you know. Bats and snakes and dogs, and such. Never seen a cat before.”

“Fjord, cats are probably the most popular familiar form. How have you not –“

Fjord rolls his eyes. “If I see a cat, I’m not staying around long enough to figure out if it’s magical or real, I’m moving away before I start wheezing. What’s its name?”

Frumpkin shifts from around his shoulder and moves down to the table, his tail curling over his paws. “His name is Frumpkin.”

“He seems very polite.”

Beauregard grins at him when he glances over at her, from her position leaning in the crook of the cabinets.

Over the course of the next few hours, he plays a few rather rowdy games of monopoly that Nott dominates them all at, and watches the muppet movie that Fjord had apparently purchased. It’s – sadder, than he had expected based on it being a holiday movie for kids, and has more than enough death imagery to make Caduceus frown at the ghosts.

Fjord and Jester are kind. He’s glad Beauregard’s made her life with two good people. Mollymauk is someone he actually already vaguely knew, through him being good friends with Caduceus, and where the tiefling is loud and colorful and brash and he is very much not, he still seemed nice. Yasha, on the other hand, was quieter but hilarious, none the less, and someone he’s looking forward to getting to know better.

A strange group of individuals. It was – fun, he supposes, but he’s glad for the quiet of Caduceus’s car on the way home.

Everyone is home when they return, taking the slow elevator up to the second floor and pouring into their tiny living room. Luc perks his head up from where Yeza is reading to him, and grins, running over to hug his mother round his middle.

“Did you wash your hands, already?”

Luc nods, hands up, and Nott takes off her mask with a happy sigh. The wards in the house help to eliminate germs and contaminants and such, for all of their benefits, but children are children.

Nott’s allergies are terrible enough without mixing in the numerable amount of other children and things her son has contact with on a daily basis.

He nods his head to Yeza and moves past the entryway, boots left in the shoe-holder and bag left once again on the coat hook. Eodwulf’s in the kitchen, crammed into the corner, diagrams spread out in a pile before him, and Caduceus drops down opposite him, gray hands reaching out to sort through the garden plots.

“Astrid’s in our room, Caleb, she had a headache and went to lie down.” Wulf glances up at him, giving a soft smile, before looking back down to sketch a line connecting two plots of the greenhouse, writing something and then sliding it to Caduceus.

He nods, and pads past the kitchen and into the short hallway, passing by Nott and Yeza’s room and then Luc’s, and then entering his own room at the end of the hallway.

It’s the largest in the apartment, but they had only taken it due to the fact that Nott and Yeza, respectfully, don’t take up as much space, and Luc as a child automatically took the smallest room.

Also due to the fact that there are four people, sharing this bedroom.

Maybe not the – best, situation, but it’s theirs.

Originally, it had just been him and Astrid and Eodwulf, sleeping in the queen bed they had crammed into the room, Nott and Yeza in theirs and Luc in his.

Caduceus had moved in after Eodwulf had found him sitting at the bottom of his stairs, ankle broken after his knee had given out halfway up, and promptly dragged him first to urgent care and secondly to the apartment, where he’s been ever since.

They had managed to fit in another twin bed to add to the queen bed, and created a mattressed monstrosity in the process. Not the most elegant, of solutions, but soft, and large enough to fit all of them. Caduceus doesn’t spend all his nights with them, but the ones he does are arguably the warmest and coziest.

Astrid’s curled up on one edge of the bed, facing the window where the curtains are drawn back, staring at the faint stars visible beyond the other buildings on this block.

Maybe – Probably not just a headache, then.

He drops down onto the opposite edge of the bed, and sends Frumpkin to go curl up by his wife’s back as he pulls off his gloves and arm coverings, folding them carefully on the dresser to be worn for tomorrow, cleaning off the day’s grime with a quick whispered spell. He changes into his worn pajamas, long sleeved and soft against his scars, and slides next to Astrid, tucking her against him as she sighs, leaning into the contact.

They’ve been married for six months. Eodwulf had finally gotten them to agree to it, after a terrifying month of medical issues and money problems and they had gotten married, the three of them, in a slightly ramshackle and cozy temple to the Archeart on the outskirts of Zadash.

The Archeart had been banned for over a century, in the Empire, before King Dwendal died and his daughter took his place and brought the country into a democracy.

Still called the Empire, out of a somewhat misplaced sentimentality, but no longer one in anything but the name.

His parents had worshiped the Archeart, and so had Eodwulf’s parents, and so had Astrid’s parents, before –

Well.

Before.

They had joined themselves together that day, under the eyes of the god of arcana and art and other, ‘cool shit’, as Wulf used to say.

It hadn’t changed anything in their relationship, beyond combining their last names into a series of syllables and dashes. He had been glad to do it, regardless. They still visit the temple on holidays, sometimes just when they fell like it - he’s always been partial to visiting before finals week starts, just for that extra luck -

Astrid sighs, again.

“Caleb?”

“ Ja ?” His thoughts turn, away from past musings, and onto the tiredness creeping up on him.

“Can you – can you turn off the lights?”

He hums, and the lights in the room dim and then darken completely as he flips the switch with mage hand.

Astrid falls asleep shortly after, and then shortly after that Eodwulf and Caduceus come in, planting themselves under the covers in the pile that they call a sleeping arrangement.

And they sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edited 1/20/2020 - grammatical errors and added lines about a law settlement, and some clarifications on who's speaking.


	2. Crystal Hearts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i might be possessed. 
> 
> but hey, enjoy!
> 
> (warnings for a nightmare, a sort-of implied panic attack, and caleb backstory typical body horror)

** Yussah Errenis ** ** ’s suffering hours **

 

**Ain** **’t no slowregaurd** : hey did anyone do the practice problems for next weeks lecture yet

**Ain** **’t no slowregaurd** : number eight is literally impossible

**The brave** : no but is that the one with the antimatter question

**The brave** : because you can’t conjure antimatter at all it’s a trick question

**Ain** **’t no slowregaurd** : how do you know that was it

**Ain** **’t no slowregaurd** : if you didn’t do the problems

**The brave** : caleb was talking about it with astrid at dinner

**The brave** : im gonna do them on Sunday

**Ain** **’t no slowregaurd** : hey **@Cooler than thou**

**Ain** **’t no slowregaud** : can we use your office on Sunday to study

**Cooler than thou** : yeah sure

**Cooler than thou** : lock the doors after you leave

**Ain** **’t no slowregaurd** : thanks Bryce

**Ain** **’t no slowregaurd** : wait are you not coming

**Cooler than thou** : I have work?

**Cooler than thou** : some of us… have other things to do

**Ain** **’t no slowregaurd** : weird flex but ok

**Cat person** : do you want me to come

**Ain** **’t no slowregaurd** : caleb is your phone finally fixed? It’s been like four weeks

**The brave** : u should come

**Cat person** : yes

**Cat person** : okay

 

He clicks his phone off and tosses it back onto the bed side table, pulling his arms back in under the covers. It’s Saturday, which means he doesn’t have classes, and Astrid doesn’t have work, and Eodwulf and Caduceus don’t have work until whenever they decide to open up the store for the day, which means –

He rolls over, and buries his face in Wulf’s shoulder, trying not to wake Astrid up from where she’s using his thigh as a pillow. Caduceus is practically draped over Wulf’s entire left side, snoring softly, and he smiles into Wulf’s shoulder before closing his eyes and going back to sleep.

Well.

Tries to, in a futile effort, and he unhappily hums, low and quiet, when five minutes of trying turns into ten turns into twenty and he extricates himself from the bed, murmuring apologies to his husband and wife and Caduceus.

He gets dressed silently – as quietly as he can, at least. The drawers make some noise.

He forgoes his usual arm sleeves and gloves. His hands aren’t as bad, this morning as some mornings – he can flex them with nearly no pain, and since he’s not leaving the apartment for at least a few hours yet there’s not really a need to cover his scars.

Everyone in the apartment either knows about them, or has scars that match. His are – worse, than the ones the trace their way over Astrid and Eodwulf’s arms, but he doesn’t feel any great need to hide them, here.

When he gets his socks on and pads out through the hallway to the kitchen, Nott and Yeza are both out there and awake already, a large mug of tea in front of him and coffee in front of her.

He waves a hello, words not really working this early in the morning, and pours himself a mug of coffee.

It’s nine thirty-eight. He doesn’t usually sleep so late, but Saturdays are the exception.

Caduceus wanders in a few minutes later, the bells on the bottom of his pants chiming with every step he takes.

He had bought those from a – very strangely named man, at an even more strangely named cart, this past Harvest’s Close festival.

Pyramid Pajamas was an – interesting cart, to say the least. Caduceus had bought six pants with bells on them, Astrid a few pairs of shorts with outdated celestial sayings on the butt, and Eodwulf a pair of pants covered in bats.

He hadn’t loved the fabrics, being sold that festival, but the proprietor had promised to get some softer things in stock for next year.

He’s cautiously optimistic.

Caduceus leans down to drop a quick kiss on top of his head and he colors, ducking his face down to take a long sip of too-hot coffee.

 The firbolg drops down heavily into the chair next to him, and props his head up against one arm, sleepily peering across the table at Yeza.

“Would you mind, terribly –“

“Not at all, Cad.”

The halfling passes his mug of tea across the table (extra large for this exact reason, because Caduceus never really wakes up enough to make his own tea before he’s already stolen some from somebody else) and Caduceus takes a long sip, setting the mug down and blinking blearily.

A moment later, he passes the mug back to Yeza, empty, and stands up, one hand gripping the back of the chair and then the counter to keep his balance, the other reaching up to grab his pink mug and pouring himself still-hot water from the kettle.

Caleb’s almost fully awake, the last remnants of his sleep draining from the edges of his mind, when Astrid and Eodwulf stumble in, Luc following behind him. Nott and Yeza move to the living room, then, after grabbing food for Luc, and he stays at the table, smiling up at his partners as they to bustle around the kitchen, eggs and vegetables and toast starting as he drains the rest of his coffee.

Judging from Caduceus’s general air of exhaustion and the way he’s started favoring his leg, it’s either already raining or going to rain. There isn’t a window in the kitchen and he’s not facing the right way to see out the ones in the living room –

He peers around Eodwulf’s larger form, and catches the flash of lightning as a low roll of thunder sweeps through the room.

Not just rain, then. A full out storm.

Great.

A low thrum on anxiety echoes through him alongside the thunder, and he scowls into his now empty coffee mug.

Astrid sits down at the table as Eodwulf finishes scrambling the eggs, and she passes Caduceus a bowl of oatmeal turned nearly pink with the amount of jam she’s shoved in there. He gets his plate, piled with eggs and home fried potatoes made from leftovers from a few days ago, and Eodwulf finally sits down.

He hates storms. Hates them for how the changing weather creeps into his scars and joints and makes them ache more than usual, hates how they make Caduceus tired and hurting, hates how they send his own sensory issues on high alert and leave him a constant two steps away from an overload.

He’s not a fan.

Another low roll of thunder grinds its way through his bones, and he grits his teeth, resting his head against the kitchen table.

Caduceus’s warm palm comes to rest against his back, and starts rubbing in slow circles as he stares at the feet of his partners below the table.

Caduceus isn’t wearing socks, which is normal, because he hates socks. Astrid is wearing her slippers, the ones with cat faces on them that Nott had gotten her for last Midsummer, and Wulf’s wearing socks covered in dragons.

Frumpkin wanders in under the table after a few seconds of staring down, and his familiar slow blinks up at him before hopping up to curl in his lap, and he sits back up, the warm and purring weight of his cat erasing some of the anxiety.

“Caleb, did you still want to go to the library, today?” Astrid asks once he’s upright again, and his mouth twitches into a frown.

“Maybe, _ja_ , but not – maybe later?”

She hums, and pokes at his plate. “Eat your eggs, Wulf actually remembered to season them this time.”

“I didn’t forget, last time you couldn’t even taste them, which, if you forgot, was because you were sick-“

“Semantics.”

He needs to work on his essay. And he still has a half of a book to read, leftover from the last time he had been to the library that he had been saving, so he has something to do today while he waits for the storm to pass.

He eats, slowly, and it tastes like almost nothing in his mouth but it’s food, nonetheless, and he knows that Wulf made it and Astrid’s eating it, even, which means that it’s safe and he’s just being weird. He’s weird, frequently, in a sense, about food - sometimes things taste so much, _so_ much, and sometimes they taste like nothing at all.

Caduceus hands him a vial, and he feels the familiar script on the cap before uncorking it and drinking it, wincing slightly at the taste. It always tastes terrible, no matter the fact that he’s been taking this one for almost two years, to combat the –

Curse, he supposes is the technical term, even if it’s his own fault.

He flexes his fingers, carefully, under the table, and bites back a flinch at the grinding feeling of crystals under his skin.

His fault. (Not really, but he still - still feels like it is.)

Another, louder, boom of thunder sweeps through the room, and he flinches outright, fork clattering to the floor as he draws his hands back to bury them in Frumpkin’s fur in his lap, his familiar jumping up from his spot around the legs of the table to curl up and start purring.

Astrid frowns, “Sorry, Caleb – I’ll just,” and traces a sigil in the air, and the sound in the room, of the rain and wind and thunder outside, fades entirely as she activates the sound wards.

Tension drains out of him as the room fills with only the quiet humming of Caduceus and Nott and Yeza’s soft conversation in the other room. He ventures up from the table, a minute later, passing his plate to Astrid to be washed with a quiet thank you and retreating to the hallway to grab his bag and laptop.

Their bedroom is just as silent as the kitchen was, and he curls up against the pillows leaned up against the headboard and types, pausing every so often to give his hands a break, eventually putting on his gloves again as his joints continue to grind.

He finishes his essay before the storm ends, and spends a few hours after that sitting in the living room reading and re-reading a book while the rain slowly comes to an end outside.  

He and Astrid take the bus to the library, once the rain’s stopped, and spend a calm two hours reading curled up in the chairs on the fourth floor that are almost little rooms themselves, round and covered in cushions and quiet and soft.

He takes home a new book about geological effects from the Calamity, an audiobook about magical plants and parasites for Caduceus, and a new translation of an older celestial epic poem for Eodwulf.

Caduceus and Eodwulf are back from checking on the shop by the time he and Astrid get home, and Caduceus makes stew for dinner, full of mushrooms and spices from the Xhorhassian grocery that Essek had dragged him to after class a few weeks ago. The other man had made him try what had possibly been the weirdest texture he’s ever had, there, some rice dessert that was less like pudding and more like - some weird cross between cake and gelatin and jam, all at once. It was… interesting, to say the least, but Essek had devoured it.

He falls asleep, that night, with the warm weight of his partners near him in the bed.

That might have been – a mistake.

Sleeping, for all of them, can be a minefield, and tonight he stumbles directly into a dream that morphs into a nightmare.

_He_ _’s – alone, in the dark deep woods that surround Ikithon’s house, trees rising up ten, twenty, thirty feet above his head and overlapping at their peaks. The sun is shining, somewhere, but he and the forest floor are in shadow. There’s frost, overlapping on all the leaves. His breath fogs in the air._

_He is alone, and it is silent. He_ _’s not being chased, not if he’s alone and it’s silent, and he’s not on a mission, not if he’s alone._

_He is in the woods, and it is peaceful._

_He walks, for a minute and then five and then ten, feet crunching against dead leaves as he steps towards the faint light in the distance._

_It_ _’s not a clearing, like he had thought it was. Instead, it’s a massive rock, pulsing with waves of light from inside that send glitter shards scattered around the trees and dead plants growing through the area._

_He takes another step forward, and the shards solidify and slice into him, crystalline structure of light that dig into his arms and bury themselves under his skin._

_He steps forward, again, and the gashes heal over, crystals trapped in his skin._

_Another step, and he can feel crystal tears falling down his cheeks as the crystals start to grow._

_He –_

_He – alone, and hurting, and changing -_

_“_ -ling, hey, c’mon –“

_Another step forward and the pain brightens to pinpricks of an inferno, fire raging within him as the rock melts and disappears, the dead grass around him coming alight in seconds, spreading to the trees and the branches and the sky._

_He is burning, and crystalline, sand and dirt forced into glass –_

He wakes up with a gasping breath heaving itself out of his lungs, and he sits up, almost wheezing with phantom smoke.

Someone’s touching him, a hand around his wrist, and he almost shakes it off, trembling starting to spread through his body, before there’s a click of beads around his wrist and he stills, a wave of warmth washing through him chasing some of the chill of the nightmare away.

He breaths, deeper, and then again as the panic in his mind stills under the calm emotions spell flowing from the bracelet.

“Hey, _liebling_ , it’s okay. You’re safe. You know where you are?”

Eodwulf’s voice is soft, but somehow deafening in the best of ways in the silence of the room, and he clings to it like the lifeline it’s meant to be.

He knows, without even opening his mouth, that words are shriveled and dust in his throat, so instead he hums and draws his hands up, stiff fingers folding and coming up towards his cheek to sign “Home.”

There’s a tap of fingers, to his other side, and a single globule of light springs into existence, casting shadows around the room without hurting his eyes. Astrid holds it in her palm as she rubs at her eyes with the other hand, and Caduceus blinks sleep out of his eyes from where he’s moved to lean up next to him.

Home.

Not – in that forest. Never in that forest, never again, never that far north, never running and hiding and bleeding in a forest.

He drops his hands back to his lap, and flexes them lightly, testing the pain. It’s worse, now, than it was yesterday. He probably slept on them, weird, and that fed into the nightmare.

Not a memory, which is a blessing in disguise.

His memories are worse.

He takes another breath and lets Wulf take his hands in his own, the gentle pressure soothing rather than confining.

There’s a shifting of bodies around him, and the mattress creaks as Eodwulf moves back and Caduceus moves forward, his head almost brushing the ceiling for a moment as he moves.

“Caleb”, he says, in his low voice, the vibrations echoing through his hands and coming to roost in his chest, “Do you think you’re okay to take off the bracelet, now?”

For a long moment, he considers. He’s calmer, now, from the spell, but also from being awake. Probably, then.

He nods, and Caduceus takes his wrist into his lap, nimbler fingers unclasping the glass beads and stowing them away back into the drawer of the bedside table.

He curls, inwardly, as the spell wears off and some of the panic comes flooding back in, but it’s more manageable, now, less tainted by the imagery of the woods and the crystals and of being alone.

He’s not alone.

His tenuous calm almost breaks, as his mind struggles to figure out what time it is, but as Astrid dims the light again he can see out of the window, the sun just starting to peak over the horizon, and he centers himself.

Early enough that he probably has enough time to go back to sleep, before Caduceus leaves for his normal Sunday morning tea with the Pumats and Eodwulf goes to therapy.

(They – they don’t go every week, anymore, only every couple, (Well. He goes every other, even now) but they have it spread out on what days each of them go, so that they don’t trap themselves in a situation where everyone’s down for the count, mentally, and the laundry and groceries and little every day tasks of living fall to the wayside.)

His breathing fades from his own awareness, and he blinks, exhaustion caught on his eyelashes. Caduceus smiles, as he blinks, and when he blinks again he’s lying down, tucked between Caduceus and Astrid with Eodwulf draped across all three of them, a pressure that’s firm and safe.

His brain’s settled enough by the time he wakes up that the rest of his morning proceeds without issue, and he shows up to unlock Bryce’s office that afternoon with only slight bags under his eyes and the braces around his wrists as evidence of this morning’s nightmare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoving all my concepts for magical assistive devices and mobility aids into this fic because i need it, okay. thank you folks in the discord server (you know who you are) that let me talk about my fics all the time. you folks r an inspiration
> 
> i have a very vague idea of where im going with this, but its going to be pretty firmly centered on living and making your way through college when it seems like the whole worlds trying to stop you, on found familys, building a life after trauma, and other such things that sort of pervade my writing because lets face it, i have a thematic concentration. my school of magic is soft and found family fics.


	3. Take a Walk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> posting schedule? what's a posting schedule?
> 
> *chugs my 'loving beauregard' juice*

She, tragically, wakes up because there’s an entire ocean of hair spilling into her mouth, interrupting her dream that had been pretty fucking good, thank you very much –

She groans, and rolls over, spitting out the wad of hair with a disgusted noise. Gods, her back hurts. Where the fuck –

She moves and manages to roll entirely off the mattress and onto the ground, rough carpet now brushing against her face.

Why is she –

It’s not a hard fall, given the fact that her mattress isn’t on a bed frame or anything, it’s just on the ground because she’s never bothered to get one when the floor works just as well.

What is weird, though, is the fact that she’s sleeping in her own bed at all.

It’s honestly a rare occurrence.

When she finally sits up, for real this time, and blinks her eyes open, light is streaming into her room through the unclosed blinds, and Jester’s sprawled out on her bed, Fjord draped across her on the opposite side of the bed.

It’s cute, it is, just also sort of weird, because, again, her bed isn’t a real bed, it’s just an air mattress on the ground, and it’s definitely not large enough for all three of them.

Probably why she fell off so easily.

Why the fuck did they fall asleep in her room.

Usually, they just – Jester doesn’t like to sleep alone, and she has the biggest bed, so they usually just cuddle up in hers. Sometimes Fjord wants to be alone, at night, so he fucks off back to his own room and it’s just Jester and her in Jester’s bed, and sometimes she wants to be alone so she sleeps in here on her shitty air mattress while Jester and Fjord presumably have sex in the other room.

It’s weird for them to be in her room.

But, now that she’s thinking about it –

Nugget whines, from his position between Jester and the wall, and she drags a hand down her face.

“Nugget’s so lonely, Beau, and he can’t sleep in my bed because then he’ll start wanting to do it all the time and Fjord doesn’t want him in his bed but your bed isn’t like, a real bed, so it’s not a bad habit and it’s super easily cleanable so please, Beau –“ Jester had said, last night, holding her fucking ridiculously sized dog.

What was she supposed to do, say no?

Nugget shifts, for a second, and then blinks his way out of her bed with a quiet pop of displaced air, returning a few seconds later with his collar and lead carefully held between his teeth.

Right.

Okay.

She tugs on her jogging pants and hoodie still half asleep, and after lazily brushing her teeth and just straight up giving up on her hair for the time being she’s out the door, jogging with Nugget bouncing beside her.

She’d checked the time, before leaving, and it’s only seven-thirty, so Jester and Fjord probably aren’t waking up for hours yet. It’s fucking cold out, this early, this late in the year, but she warms up as she moves.

It hasn't snowed yet, this year, thankfully. It means that while it’s cold out, there’s no ice and snow cutting into the dog's paws and her own skin.

Good, that.

She and Nugget make a lap around the block before diverting to the shops on the street that lead into campus. It’s early, for people to be out and about on a Sunday, but the Vagrant is open as usual, and it’s pleasantly warm inside as she opens the door, Nugget stepping in alongside her.

It’s near empty in there, just one of the Pumats manning the drink counter and a firbolg that she recognizes as Nila drinking a mug of something hot and steaming in the corner. And it is Sunday, so Caduceus is probably in the back sharing tea with the other Pumats, probably complaining about how his orchids aren’t growing fast enough or something.

She waves, at Nila, and is rewarded with a happy wave back.

She gets her usual – the good coffee, that they have here, with a shit ton of sugar because she likes sweet things, sue her – and slides into the chair opposite Nila, Nugget curling up to lap at the water dish she places next to him.

“Hey, Nila. How’s things?”

She’s rewarded with a brilliant grin as the other woman starts rambling about her kid, and how he’s started taking dance lessons – “And he’s brilliant at ballet, Beauregard, just amazing –“

Her coffee’s grown cold by the time Nila’s finished talking, but she keeps drinking it anyways. No use wasting it.

“I gotta go, Nila, I’m meeting Caleb and Nott to study later, but have a good day, alright?”

Nugget gives a soft woof from under the table, and Nila laughs, reaching down to scratch him behind the ears.

“Have a good run, Beau.”

The bell on the door chimes on her way out, and then she and Nugget are running again, looping back towards home.

It’s almost nine, by the time she’s back, but the apartment is still dark and quiet.

Should maybe try and make breakfast –

Probably shouldn’t.

She grabs a bag of chips, from where she’d stashed it last week, and munches casually as she heads back into her room, standing over the air mattress and poking Fjord with her foot.

Her friend groans into the pillow, and blinks yellow eyes open blearily, staring at her uncomprehendingly.

Jester stirs, then, and wakes up as well.

“Are you wearing my hoodie?” She asks sleepily, words half slurred.

She is, isn’t she.

In her defense, it had been dark this morning.

“Yeah.”

Jester clicks her tongue. “Hot.”

Fjord groans, again, and sits up, a hand reaching up to rub crud out of his eyes.

“Did you get food, Beau, or should I make pancakes.”

Jester’s tail thwaps against the air mattress, and the sound echoes. “Pancakes, pancakes, pancakes –“ she sings, clapping her hands, and Fjord rolls his eyes, fond, before standing up.

She follows him into the kitchen as he starts to rummage through the fridge and parks herself on top of the cutlery cabinet, still absentmindedly munching on her stale chips.

“D’you have any weird dreams last night?”

Fjord’s head hits the door of the fridge as he starts upright, and she winces in solidarity.

He doesn’t meet her eyes as he keeps pulling ingredients out of the fridge.

“Nope.”

“Mhm,” she hums, not convinced.

She doesn’t need to do any monk shit to know that’s a lie.

“If you’re still having them, you should talk to the counseling center about it.”

 “It’s fine, Beau. Leave it.”

Jeez.

She’ll get Jester to ask him about it later. She isn’t the one dating Fjord. (Obviously, obviously, and thank god, Fjord’s one of her best friends, but she’s _way_ to gay for that.)

The pancakes are good, as per usual. It’s the only thing he can make that’s edible, but boy are they fucking edible.

She leaves a little after that and chooses to walk to campus, rather than catch the bus or get Fjord to drive her. It’s not that far, only about a mile, and despite the chill in the air it’s a pretty nice day.

The closer she gets to campus, the more she can see of the spire, and as she steps onto the main street the spire comes into full view.

A good – seventy-five percent, she would say, of the classrooms and offices and study space and food and everything other than dorms, really, is held within the spire.

It has an actual, official name – the Darrington Spire of Education, something like that, but she and everyone else just call it the spire. It had only been renamed to be after somebody a couple of years ago after some rich dude donated a bunch of money to the university.

Bryce’s office is on the fourth floor, in the Gender Studies department, and by the time she hikes up the stairs – they have elevators, and good ones, but the view from the stairwell windows is pretty fucking sick and elevators make her anxious – Caleb’s already inside, as well as Nott.

She knocks on the door, just to make sure they know she’s here – probably the right decision, due to how Caleb flinches and turns towards the door with one hand raised, Nott’s own hand straying down to the pocket crossbow that they all pretend they don’t know she has.

They both settle once they see it’s her.

She dumps her backpack on the ground and pulls out her laptop and notes, dropping them onto the table with a low thud before kicking her backpack back under the table.

Caleb’s laptop is open, but he’s not typing, and judging by the fact that he’s wearing both his gloves and his enchanted wrist braces, he’s probably not up for much of that today.

That’s fine, though.

She types fast.

“Alright. You want to explain to me how the fuck antimatter works, and also why I thought taking this class was a good idea?”

Caleb smiles, and they start.

 

Hours later, she’s done her problem sets for both this week’s lecture and next week’s, and finally figured out how conjuration magic works, at least a little bit.

She’s not even – she’s taking this class for a gen ed requirement. She isn’t an arcana major, she has no talent in the practical aspects at all, but it had seemed fun, at first, and Caleb and Nott were both in it.

She hadn’t expected the amount of work. She means – she still likes it? Maybe? But if Caleb and Nott hadn’t been taking this class she would have dropped it months ago.

As it is now, finals are creeping up on them, only a few weeks away.

She’ll be fine, though.

Probably.

Caleb packs away his things with unsteady hands, and before he can swing his backpack on his shoulders she takes it and swings it over her own back.

She’s not _that_ unperceptive. She can tell when her best friend is in pain.

Caleb colors, a tiny bit. “Ah – _danke_.”

“Don’t worry about it, dude. You and Nott want to grab some food?”

Nott’s mouth shifts, from under her mask. “I didn’t – we have leftovers at home.”

“Did you forget to bring your wallet.”

Her brown eyes narrow, and Nott points at her. “No, I wouldn’t –“

She pats her pockets, and then sighs. “Maybe.”

It’s cool.

She doesn’t have much money right now, either.

“It’s cool, Nott. You guys mind if I head over for dinner, though? Fjord and Jessie went out to some Marquet fusion restaurant and I didn’t want anything from there.”

She has food in her bag, just a couple of protein bars, so it’s not the end of the world if they tell her no.

“Of course, Beauregard. It’s just stew, though, made with some things from the Xhorhassian place Essek showed me.”

She rolls her eyes, at Caleb’s mention of Essek. “Are you still hanging out with that nerd? I thought he stopped coming to classes weeks ago.”

“He is not a – he was having some health problems, Beauregard, and dropped out of the semester. We’re still ‘hanging out’.” He does air quotes, as he talks, and then winces as he drops his hands back into his lap.

Shit.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like – like that. But he is a nerd, dude. You’re a nerd, he’s a nerd, we’re all fucking nerds.”

She gets a laugh out of him, at that, and grins inwardly.

Success.

The walk to Caleb’s apartment, from the Spire, is short but freezing cold.

She’s been outside way too much today.

Nott and Caleb take the elevator up, but she takes the stairs and just waits for them in the lobby outside.

Everyone’s home, when the three of them step inside and toe off their shoes, the wards reactivating as Caleb closes the door. Yeza and Luc and Caduceus are on the living room couch, watching another one of those muppet movies – it might be the newer one, that’s a spoof of that movie about the cleric pirates.

Astrid and Eodwulf are at the kitchen table, and while Nott goes to join her husband on the couch, Caleb drops into one of the chairs and sinks his head into his husband’s shoulder. She sits down next to Astrid, on the other side, and shares a small smile with her.

The stew is good, for all that it’s a day old, crammed full of mushrooms and vegetables that she only vaguely recognizes.

She leaves, after another hour, warm and with stickers on one cheek from where Luc had decorated her, and the walk back to her own apartment doesn’t feel as cold.

Fjord and Jester are back when she opens the door, and they watch a movie curled up on the couch that she doesn’t remember, later, because she falls asleep before the opening credits even play.

The next morning, she goes through the mail before she leaves for classes, and throws out a letter addressed to her from Kamordah without even opening it.

She doesn’t care, at this point, what they have to say to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! feel free to leave a comment
> 
> might be a new chapter tomorrow, or later today if im posessed with writing demons again


	4. Look at her Go-reguard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a Slightly shorter chapter than my usual, but ive been super sick for three days and wanted to get Something out. another beau chapter, because im love her.

When she wakes up, back twinging from sleeping on the couch, Jester and Fjord have both already left - early morning chem lecture, for Jester, and a physics class for Fjord, the nerd - so she stretches without fear of hitting either of them, laying herself crosswise against the length of the couch. But - with an eye on the clock - she eventually groans, and gets up, stumbling back towards her bedroom.

She just has her lectures for Yussah’s class – Arcana Theory – and her meetings with Dairon on Mondays, so she just throws on sweats and a hoodie and calls it a day.

She could dress nice, maybe, but these are comfortable and don’t scrape at her skin, and it’s just a theory lecture and a training session.

Nothing fancy needed for those.

The walk to campus is made way too fucking early, but it’s made, and she’s in her seat in the lecture hall on the second floor of the spire before it’s even nine.

Lecture doesn’t start til nine fifteen, so she’s early, which is fine, because it means she can haul her shitty laptop out and start typing out her notes from the tangents Caleb went on during their study session yesterday.

She really has no idea why he’s in this class. Well –

That’s a lie. She knows the reason, because his credits didn’t come through from his past school because he didn’t register as a transfer student out of fear of being tracked, just signed up as an entirely new student, name change and gender marker firmly fixed in place. But before this, he’d been on the verge of graduating early, even, and now he’s stuck back in early level arcana classes when she knows for an absolute fact that he could teach this class if he wanted to.

Yussah realizes this, too, which is why Caleb spends most of these lectures reading articles that Yussah leaves on his desk when he comes through the door.

An efficient system, that.

He deserves better than this, but it’s easier this way, maybe.

She doesn’t really know.

Nott comes through the door exactly thirteen minutes before lecture starts, hands tightly wound around the straps of her backpack, button necklace bouncing with every step she takes.

“Hey, Nott, where’s Caleb?”

He’s usually here by now.

Nott’s face screws up, her mouth set in a firm line. “He stopped to talk to Professor Errenis outside the elevators, said it was important.”

She raps long fingernails against the canvas of her bag.

She glances at her – she’s known Nott for only six months, and Caleb a month longer than that, but she can read both of them like a book. She’s nervous, and hungry, probably, and wishes she had stayed with Caleb but Caleb had probably ushered her away.

It’s been a weird couple of months.

She laughs, inwardly, and tosses a granola bar at Nott (checking first that it’s one of the ones she’s written NOTT on in all capitals – which, she doesn’t really have to do? The ones she makes for Nott are covered in plastic wrap, not actual wrappers, and thusly look significantly different), whose eyes widen as she slips the mask down off her mouth, still hanging from her ears, and immediately peels down the wrapping and bites into the bar.

She chews, for a second, and doesn’t bother to swallow before saying, “Is this peanut butter banana?”

Hell yeah, she got the flavor right.

“Yeah, is it good?”

Nott nods, and stuffs another bite into her mouth.

Fuck yeah.

The bunch of them living in that apartment are, save Caduceus and Eodwulf, terrible, terrible cooks.

Really questionable how any of them made it this far.

(And she knows – that’s not a great thing to think, because she knows how hard it’s been getting to this point of steady ground, but seriously! Caleb can’t even make pasta right, he thought you had to put olive oil in it! Who does that!)

She’s not a great cook, either, just good at making granola bars out of limited fancy ingredients that Jester buys for her on her mom’s money.

Jester’s mom is really too good for –

Her thoughts are interrupted by Caleb, finally, arriving, alongside most of the rest of their classmates, spilling into the lecture hall as Yussah starts to set up in the front.

It’s nine thirteen.

Late, for both of them.

Caleb sinks into the seat next to her, and flexes his wrists once, a clicking sound at the edge of her hearing, before grinning, small and bright.

Jeez.

“What’s got you all smiley,” she shoots at him in a low whisper, and he just keeps grinning.

“I’ll tell you after class.”

Lecture is – boring. She’s bored in classes, most of the time. She’s bored in general, most of the time.

She manages to concentrate, just barely, fingers moving in rapid twitches around the fidget cube that Nott had given her in her lap, but it’s still boring.

She knew most of this just from listening to Caleb mutter to himself.

Class ends, and she stays in her seat, turning to peer at where Caleb’s packing up his own things.

“What’d you and Yussah talk about, then? He ask you to give up college and just become a professor already?”

Nott snorts as she packs her notebooks into her satchel.

“He asked me to TA for next semester’s arcana theory lecture.”

Oh, shit.

“Hell yeah, dude. Did you say yes?”

Caleb blinks, and then nods, hands straying out to tap at the straps of his bag. “ _Ja_ , I did.”

Nott grins, mask still in place but smile visible from the creases around her eyes.

She’s glad. Yussah is – he’s a weird dude, but he’s harmless. The kind of professor that seems really imposing, when you first talk to him, or have him for class, but if you show up to his office hours he has pictures of his husband literally everywhere. And he’s friends with Allura, and she’s cool as _fuck_ , so he really can’t be all that bad.

She knows, from Astrid’s worrying when this semester started, the difficulty that Caleb had had trying to deal with him as a professor. She’s glad that that’s mostly resolved.

She has a couple more hours before she’s due to meet Dairon.

Nott has class, after this one – and the halfling in question is already packed, and waving goodbye to Caleb as she darts out the door – but Caleb doesn’t, not until like two or something.

“You want to grab some bubble tea and sit in the library?”

He nods, and they’re off.

She gets her usual, which is black tea with pineapple and strawberry, because it tastes like sunshine poured into a cup and she’s soft like that, and Caleb gets his usual, which is almond flavored because he’s weird, and she pops the boba in her mouth, savoring it, as they then make the trek to the library.

There’s a spot, on the third floor, where deep in the stacks there’s a cluster of tables and couches. It’s by far her preferred spot, because there’s a window, there, and outlets, and the couch is actually pretty comfortable.

It’s the unofficial Caleb-Nott-Beauregard zone, and she knows that Jester and Fjord and Yasha use it as well, though she’s never seen them there at the same time.

It’s unoccupied when they turn the corner and sit in some of the chairs.

A few hours are spent with her typing, Caleb typing, and the background noise of Caleb’s familiar purring in his lap, the music in her own headphones letting her block out any background noise and focus – well, mostly focus – on studying.

Caleb leaves, to go to his next class, and she works for another twenty minutes before giving up the ghost and packing up her things, making the short walk across the gardens near the Spire to the gym she meets Dairon at.

The elf in question is already in the back room by the time she leaves her stuff in a locker and wraps her arms, and they smirk at her as she walks in.

“You ready,” they ask, arms folded, and she grins in response, fists already raised.

Dairon doesn’t wreck her that badly, this go around. She’s known them for years, ever since they were her counselor at the Cobalt Soul run camp her parents had sent her to, the summer before they kicked her out, and had reconnected in Zadash after years away from the whole – monk thing.

The Cobalt Soul isn’t the same organization of spies and monks and fighters that it used to be, because there isn’t really a need, in this world, but Dairon knows cool monk shit and teaches it to her, so she can run fast and punch well, and that in itself is pretty cool.

She only has a couple of new bruises, from jabs that she didn’t block, when she makes the walk home, bag thumbing against her back as she walks.

Fjord’s truck is parked out back, when she lets herself in through the back entrance, waving to the security guard – Jared, nice dude, if a little quiet – and taking the stairs two at a time to her apartment.

Jester’s back, too, it seems, because her glittery converse are left in a pile next to Fjord’s boots by the door. She toes off her own sneakers and makes her way through the living room – empty – and to the kitchen – not empty.

Jester’s sitting at the table, textbook and plate of mini donuts in front of her as she studies. Fjord, across from her, is peering at a printed out recipe, a collection of ingredients stacked in front of him.

She takes in the recipe, the ingredients, and the pot left on the stove before sweeping in and stealing the paper out from under Fjord’s eyes, scanning it with a quick glance.

Blinks, a couple of times.

“Dude, did you seriously look up a recipe for how to make pastaroni? It’s on the side of the box.”

Fjord looks down, at the box of noodles he’s holding in one hand. “No it doesn’t, I checked –“

She points at the other side, and had the pleasure of watching his face darken.

“Right. I – right.”

She takes over from there. Fjord, around a stove, is pretty much useless, and Jester’s only good at baking, so she does most of the cooking when they don’t just eat out.

She’s good enough to follow directions. She isn’t great at cooking, but she’s better than a lot of the people she knows, mostly because a lot of the people she owns are disaster fires.

They sleep in Jester’s bed, that night.

And she isn’t sure, but she thinks –

Fjord escapes Jester’s clutches, somewhere in the vicinity of three am, and doesn’t come back for almost an hour, and when he does, he smells like soap and the ocean.

She really needs to have an actual talk with him about that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr is @moonbyrd 
> 
> have a great day! a great night! a great unspecified area of time!
> 
> thanks for reading! feel free to comment, or whatever :3c


	5. Movies and Mayhem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the semi-delay in updates! ive been.... real sick. but im slowly figuring out where i want to take this fic, so thats good at least! this chapter's a little short, but the next one should be up this weekend!

 

He leaves the library with urgency in his steps. He hadn’t lost track of time, not exactly – that would be more concerning, if he had. Just got a little distracted, and let it slip between his fingers. He only has a couple of minutes before he’s usually at his next class, even if even that is fifteen minutes earlier than the actual start time.

Yussah’s class earlier had gone well, the offer of becoming a TA next semester included, and it’s put him in a better mood that he carries with him as he ducks through the revolving doors of the library, treading out the path across the street back to the Spire. He just has a general education class next, about Age of Arcanum celestial poetry – helped by the fact he is fluent in celestial, and passable in ancient celestial – and class proceeds in a sequence of fast minutes of translating and rereading some passages while his classmates around him do the same.

Class ends, and he drags himself to the basement, grabbing a late lunch from the cafeteria contained within before he forgets to eat at all. With Frumpkin trotting at his side, he exits the building once again and heads to the student union across the street, taking the elevator to the sixth floor.

On that floor, tucked in a back corner, is the Spectrum office, and it’s as good a place as any to eat lunch.

Calianna is there, as per usual, splayed across the couch with a book perched on her lap, wheelchair tucked away in the corner. She looks up when he comes in, and tucks long hair behind one ear before grinning.

“Caleb, hey,” she says, voice lilting on her accent, “Did you remember lunch?”

Silently, he lifts the arm holding his food, and she laughs, twisting so that she’s sitting back up. “That’s fair. Are you coming to the meeting, Friday? I think I’m going to try and make it another movie night.”

“What movie?”

She hums, and taps a polished finger against her book. “Probably _The Darrington Chronicles?_ ”

He snorts, and she scowls at him. “What, it’s a good movie!”

“We’ve watched that three times for the club already, Cali.”

He twists open his sandwich, and then sets it down as his phone buzzes in his pocket.

**Went to Zadash and all I got was this groupchat**

**Astrid:** caleb did u eat lunch yet

 **Astrid** : I got Soup but I was going to eat it in cali’s office do u want to join y/n

 **Wulf** : am I invited

 **Astrid** : no

 **Wulf** : betrayal

 **Astrid** : yeah sure whatever

 **Wulf** : caduceus is staying at the shop til later but I can be there in like. Five minutes

 **Astrid:** caleeeeebbbbb

 **Caleb** : im already here

 

He looks up, and then smiles softly at Astrid as she comes through the door, his smile growing when she gives him a sigh and flops down into one of the chairs around the table, a bag from Pumat’s at her side.

Eodwulf arrives, a few minutes later, with dirt smudged on his cheek bone, and Astrid practically throws him a cup of soup and some bread before digging into her own food.

“I just think – _Chronicles_ is good, Cali, but if we watch something else more people might come?” He says, tentatively.

She wrinkles her nose. “I don’t know that many good movies, though – maybe _The Book of Ravens?_ ”

Astrid nearly chokes on her drink, and sets it down carefully, staring incredulously at Calianna.

“Calianna, isn’t that the movie that’s banned in Vasselheim for being sacrilegious and got wiped from most streaming sites?”

She blinks.

“I mean, yeah, but it’s a really good movie?”

Astrid stares at her.

“It shows an attempt at trying to resurrect Vecna.”

Calianna wilts.

“It’s – it’s a musical?”

It rings a bell – oh, right.

He snaps his fingers, and Astrid and Calianna’s eyes shoot over towards him.

“The one with the puppets, _ja_? Of the betrayer gods?”

“Yeah, that one! Where they depict the crawling king as one of those furry worm on a string things during the kids’ puppet show –“

Eodwulf, without looking up from his soup, just mutters, “What the absolute fuck,” and keeps eating.

Calianna eventually decides on showing one of the older versions of _New Dawn, New Magics_ , because –“It can be like a holiday party, and since finals are next week anyways it’ll be a nice break?”

“This Friday, Cali? Wulf and I have to drive up to Deastock to pick up some furniture we got online.” Astrid points at Wulf, and says warningly, “And remind Caduceus to fill up the van, yeah? I don’t want to run out of gas half way there.”

Cali frowns. “Aw, shucks.”

After considering for a moment, he folds the now empty wrapper from his sandwich and throws it in the trash – making the mental note to pick that up later because he missed.

“I can be there, Calianna. I’ll bring Nott and Caduceus and Beau, _ja_?”

Calianna claps her hands together, excitedly, and grins at him.

“Yeah! Can you ask Beau to make sure she invites Jester and Fjord and their friends, too? I’ll bring snacks and stuff, and juice? And those rice crackers Nott likes.”

He smiles, crooked, and rubs at one of his wrists idly. “Sounds like a plan, Calianna.”

It’s easy enough, when he gets home that night, to convince Nott and Caduceus to come. Nott agrees after he promises her grape juice and rice crackers, and Caduceus agrees off the bat.

Caduceus, to much amusement from the rest of their – thing, is a very agreeable person.

They really do love that about him. It’s a nice contrast to the three of theirs’ concentrated stubbornness.

 

The rest of the week, up until Friday, proceeds as usual, the extra mounting stress from finals notwithstanding. He wakes up, and goes to classes, uses the library, hangs out with Beau at Pumats’ and drinks too much coffee, and comes home.

Astrid and Eodwulf leave in Caduceus’s van Friday morning, to go pick up the enchanted wardrobe that they had found online a few weeks ago. Space, in their apartment, is at an absolute premium, and when they found a wardrobe of holding online it was obvious that they had to get it.

It is, however, in Deastock, at the branch of Gilmore’s that’s out there (there have been rumors of one opening in Zadash, but as of yet there isn’t one here), so his partners are driving out to go get it while he stays in Zadash with Caduceus and Nott and Yeza and Luc for the weekend.

He hugs them goodbye, somewhere before dawn, after a whisper of “Be safe, _ja_?”

Astrid kisses him on the forehead, and then they leave.

When he wakes up for real, a few hours later, Caduceus is already gone from the bed, but he can hear his partner’s gentle humming from the kitchen, alongside the clatter of pans and the smell of –

Pancakes, he thinks with a fond smile. Banana ones.

Yeza is at work by the time he’s awake, during the week, but Nott is in the kitchen with Caduceus, kicking her socked feet off the ground as she half dozes in one of the table chairs.

“Morning, Caduceus,” he says softly, and the firbolg smiles back, fond.

His relationship with Caduceus is – not lesser, than his relationships with Astrid and Eodwulf, but different.

He loves him, dearly so, but it’s less of the romantic love he shares with his childhood friends and more of a –

Something harder to describe.

Family, most certainly. Some combination of friend and family and partner.

Caduceus splits his time between their bed and the couch, when the rest of them need a night for themselves. He knows, from stories of the firbolg’s childhood, that he and his family slept in piles, almost, with nearly all of the children sharing the same room and nest arrangement. It’s that aspect that made their bed arrangement, while – small, maybe, for the four of them, still a better alternative than sleeping on his own every night.

He hadn’t been one for physical contact, and in many ways still isn’t, but he trusts the three of them implicitly, and that helps override his ingrained responses to being touched.

He pats Nott on the head, once, before sitting down, a plate of pancakes already slid in front of him.

They’re delicious, as they always are, but when he stops eating halfway through to take his meds, he realizes with a start that he had forgotten to invite Beauregard and her friends to the movie, tonight.

Which – Calianna, in all probability, as already invited her, but he should make sure –

**lesbian avenger (beauregard)**

**caleb:** Calianna is hosting a movie night for spectrum, of New Dawn, New Magics

 **caleb** : would you like to come and invite fjord and jester and whoever they want to invite as well

 **beau** : cali already invited me but yeah im coming

 **beau** : did u forget lol

 **caleb** : :(

 **beau:** fjord and jessie are leaving tomorrow, tho

 **beau** : But I think fjord invited molly and yasha? Idk tho. I told him to, but he’s forgetful, u know how it is

 **beau** : if you see cali today though before the movie can you ask her if she’s bringing snacks or should I bring granola bars

 **caleb** : she is ja but if you bring granola bars nott will be happy

 **beau** : yeah okay

 **beau** : see you tonight dude

 

He locks his phone with a click, and forces his way through the rest of his pancakes, Caduceus finally sitting down to eat his as well.

Nott leaves for class a minute later, and after wishing Caduceus goodbye he leaves as well, Frumpkin trotting at his heels as he makes his way to the spire again. He only has one class on Fridays, which he drags himself through, notes taken in an untidy scrawl, before heading back across the street to Calianna’s office.

The woman in question is there – really, he wonders sometimes if she ever leaves – when he pushes his way through the doors, wheelchair replaced by a pair of forearm crutches leaned against the arm of the couch.

She waves, when he comes in, and then returns to what she had been doing, and he sets himself down at the table with a sigh, spending the next few hours before they’ll move to the other room for the movie typing up his notes and studying for his first final next week.

He hasn't seen this movie before. Hopefully, it's - fine.

Calianna has weird taste in movies, and weird taste in fashion, and weird taste in nail colors, but she knows better than to show something that could upset them during a public movie night, at least without warning. Never without warning.

She’s kind like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a little short, to be honest. it's also been a hot minute! I've been having some writer's block and work's been a lot, but i figured it was better to get out a chapter and try and push through it than let this fic just dwindle in the back of my head.

He stops studying three hours into the five-hour wait and gives in to the urge to read a synopsis of the movie on his phone. It looks fine. Some romance, about an arcanist and a paladin falling in love over New Dawn, an element on intrigue and secrecy added to the whole affair by setting it in Vasselheim. He’s seen it before, he’s now realizing, a few months after – after -

It’s pretty blurry, his memory of it, but he remembers liking it.

He’s sure that Beauregard will hate it.

She’s of the opinion that he, and everyone else he lives with, has horrendous taste in movies.

It’s not – an unfair judgment. His idea of a good movie is documentaries, and Astrid favors fantasy, and Eodwulf and Caduceus rarely stay still long enough to actually watch one.

Nott and Yeza, nowadays, watch mainly a lot of kids movies with Luc half-sleep between them on the couch.

An hour before they set the start time for the movie night, Beauregard slides into the room, hair pinned in a messy bun where it’s not shaved down. She glares at nothing in particular as she practically flings herself into the chair opposite him.

He raises one eyebrow, slowly, and she glares, again, this time at him.

“Are you good, Beau?” Callie’s lilting voice forces her shoulders down, and she sighs as the glare dwindles.

“Fjord and Jessie left this morning because they didn’t have any finals and wanted to get a head start before holiday traffic, and I’m just –“

She pauses, and her face scrunches up a little harder.

“Lonely?” He suggests, and she scowls at him.

“Aw, Beau –“

“Shut up, Cali.”

Calianna grins, unrepentantly, and wheels towards the table in the desk chair.

“You love them so much, and you miss them –“ she sings, and Beau blushes, dark, and kicks the table.

Calianna drifts back towards the computer, almost cackling, and he cracks a small smile of his own.

“Headed back to Nicodranas?” He asks, and Beau sighs.

“Yeah. They offered to let me come with, but I have the stupid final for Yussah’s class next week, and – well. You know.”

He nods.

“You are still welcome at our apartment, Beauregard. Any time.”

She smiles, small – and then grimaces and pulls out a letter from her backpack.

“Right – I got another one this morning, you wanna help me destroy it?”

He takes it and flips it over. It’s from her parents – again, he thinks sourly, and he glances back up at her.

“Did you read it?”

She scowls, and swipes the letter from his hands.

“No, and I don’t fucking want to –“

He puts his hands up, cautiously, and frowns. “I wasn’t suggesting – Just wondering, Beau.”

“Because they can suck my dick, honestly. Anyways, I was going to burn it, but then I thought, nah, probably not like, the best place to do that, so – you want to like, ice it? Shatter it? Make it explode?”

Beau’s hands are shaking.

With one hand, he lays his own hand across hers, and with the other, he takes the envelope.

A whispered incantation later, and the letter is ice in his hands, shattering into mist as he channels force through it.

“D’you want some soda, Beau?”

Calianna stands from her chair, and takes a few careful steps towards the door, crutches scraping against the door frame.

“It’s no trouble,” she adds, and exits before Beau even answers.

Calianna is – maybe not the best at this, he thinks fondly, before squeezing Beau’s hand.

“Are you okay?”

She stares at him, eyes too bright, and blinks rapidly.

“I just –“

She wrenches her hand out of his grasp, and stands up, pacing in a short circuit against the back wall.

“Why won’t they just stop?”

He hums, and Beau keeps pacing.

She doesn’t actually want him to answer.

There’s a pattern, here.

“They fucking kicked me out the minute they wouldn’t get fucking arrested for doing so, what right do they have – what – gods damned plan, to get me to come back, huh?”

She, in a snapped motion, hops up on one of the chairs, and towers over him for a moment, gesticulating wildly.

“Like, I’m here,  a fucking adult, no thanks to them, and they have the audacity to come asking for me to see them?”

He looks up at her, and twists his hands in a familiar movement behind his back, ready to cast feather fall and save her the rugburn if the universe decides falling is in order.

For a moment, Beau’s tirade stops, and she just stares, before sinking into a crouch and then slipping off the chair to lay on the ground.

“I just want them to leave me alone,” she says, to the ceiling, and he lets the spell slip from his grasp.

“I know, Beau.”

“Why do they – I don’t understand –“

She stops, and he slides off his own chair to sit down on the ground by her head, knees protesting the motion.

She’s not crying, but her eyes are red, like she’s been trying not to.

“They are shitty people,” he says, the same thing that he’s said every time Beau’s had this argument with herself.

There’s a pattern, and there’s a script, and he hates that there is one but there is.

For a long while, he and Beau sit in silence.

Frumpkin makes biscuits against his leg.

Beau laughs, the same half-real and half-fake one that she gives, and sits up, leaning against him gently.

“Right.”

She swipes a hand across her eyes, and stands in a fluid motion, offering a hand to haul him up as well.

“Thanks, Caleb.”

He shrugs, and she taps him on the shoulder.

Calianna returns a minute later, a bottle of soda balanced precariously in her elbow, and Beau springs up to grab it from her as she makes her way through the doorway.

She surveys the room, for a moment, and shakes her head.

“Think anyone else is showing up?”

He checks his mental clock, and then the real clock on the wall that’s always a minute slow.

It’s almost time, actually.

Only five minutes until the time that they had chosen.

“I think Molly and Yasha are coming? Caleb, any of your bunch heading over?”

He grimaces, remembering.

“Wulf and Astrid are still in Deastock, so they aren’t. I think Caduceus is, though? And Nott.”

The door pushes open, and a small (it can’t really be called a gaggle, even though he wants to call it that because that word’s fun to say ) group of people push their way through, laughing uproariously, and the night begins.

 

In the end, the movie is as – well. Lackluster, for lack of a better word, as he half remembers. It’s based off a true story, but it’s one that’s been twisted to fit the narrative of the New Dawn series and is overall just holiday fluff.

Nice enough, for a group movie, but not exactly riveting material.

He spends most of the movie trying not to fall asleep leaning against Caduceus, who had shown up half an hour in, dirt smudged across his nose, with Nott lying asleep across his legs.

Keg came, along with Nila and Shakaste and Twiggy, the gnome practically bouncing off the walls before becoming abruptly quiet as the movie started.

Molly turns up towards the end, alone and bedraggled looking, still cheerful but with makeup running from the pouring rain outside that had started not long after they had pressed play for the movie.

A nice enough turnout, for the week before finals.

 

Astrid and Wulf end up making it home late, that night, and the relief of having them home, safe – and of having room to walk around in their apartment, now that they have extra-dimensional space to throw their shit into – almost overwhelms his anxiety about exams.

Almost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for sticking with this, for reading, and for being cool!
> 
> feel free to comment!  
> :3c


	7. Phone Tag

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :3

 It’s before dawn when she slinks out of her apartment, still just wearing her pajamas, locks the door, and starts the walk to Caleb’s apartment.

Last night – the movie, it had been fine, but she had gotten home to yet another letter burning a hole through their dining room table and she had barely slept, terrified that her father was going to send someone to the house, send someone to drag her back home again, terrified that she –

Well. Needless to say, she hadn’t slept much.

But she knows the walk to Caleb’s apartment like the back of her hand, she’s made this trip enough times, and it’s freezing out but she had remembered to shove on one of Jester’s jackets before leaving.

Her backpack thuds against her as she starts to jog, sneakers hitting the ground in a steady thrum of movement. She has her books, and her notes, and her laptop, enough to study for her first set of finals.

If she isn’t going to sleep, she can at least mooch off of Caleb’s academic energy and get some work done.

Before long – the sun only just starting to come over the horizon, light glancing across the sidewalk, she makes her way to the back entrance of Caleb’s building, and starts her way up the stairs. There is an elevator, and she takes it when she’s with Caleb or Caduceus or the rest of them because gods knows that they have enough problems without adding falling down another flight of stairs to the list, but she likes the movement, likes the beat of her feet against the cold concrete of the staircase that seeps through the bottoms of her sneakers.

It’s only when she’s standing outside the door to the apartment that she realizes that maybe, just maybe, it’s too early to be here, on a Saturday, and she probably should have waited –

The door swings open while she’s starting to take her phone out, fingers poised to text Cad as the one most likely to be awake, and she blinks at Eodwulf who blearily blinks back at her.

“Can you just –“ he mutters, and leans down past her to pick up a flyer off the ground.

She gets a glance at it before he balls it up, and – jeez.

She pities whoever had been handed the short stick to hand out flyers for a Lawbearer temple at five in the morning.

He wanders back inside, leaving the door open, and she follows, shutting it gently with her foot as she lets her bag slide down to rest against the wall, shoes toed off and placed with the mess of everyone else’s.

Eodwulf returns to the kitchen, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, and gestures towards the coffee machine.

“It’s busted, but we’ve got tea, or whatever.”

He pops something out of where he’d been clutching it in his hand into his mouth, furtively, and she stares at him for a moment before narrowing her eyes.

“Are you eating – are you fucking eating frozen tater tots?” She whispers, trying not to wake up anyone else in the apartment, and the man has the audacity to shrug.

“It’s good,” he mumbles, chewing, and he places the bag back into the freezer from where it had been left out on the table.

She stares, for another moment - “It’s six in the morning, Wulf,” she mutters - and then shrugs to herself, sitting down next to him at the table after grabbing their orange juice from the fridge.

“Everything good, man? It’s kinda early for you to be awake.”

Kind of is an understatement. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen Wulf wake up past ten on a day he didn’t have work.

“Just woke up early, couldn’t get back to sleep.” He yawns, teeth flashing, and she glances towards the hallway, into the living room, where she can spot a shock of pink hair drifting over the edge of the futon shoved in the space between the couch and the wall.

“Still tired, though?”

He nods, and she grins at him, one eyebrow raised.

It takes a moment, but he scowls at her, burying his head in his hands.

“Shut up,” he mutters, and her grin fades as she takes in the stress starting to radiate off him.

“Sorry, dude. Bad night, or –“

He shrugs.

“Not especially, just. Those old fun dysphoria emotions, you know how it is.”

Ah.

“You need me to break out the fancy hair stuff? I can run back and grab Jester’s hair ribbons –“

He laughs, one hand swiping at where a tear’s started to form, and leans back in his chair to stare at the ceiling.

“No, it’s – don’t worry about it, Beau.”

He blinks, at the ceiling, and then directs his gaze towards her again, the fingers on one hand tangling in the fabric of his sleeve as he starts to rub the edges together.

“Why are you here?”

Guess he’s actually awake, now.

“Sorry, that was rude – It’s not even six thirty, Beau, are you good?”

She splays her fingers out and does a neat jazz hands, and Eodwulf’s eyebrows furrow.

“Just parents being a bag of dicks. Didn’t feel like sitting at the apartment, so I figured I could come here and at least attempt to be productive. Feed off Caleb’s academic fervor.”

He nods, sagelike, and points to the row of sticky notes adorning the door to the fridge.

“We’re making him take a break later to go look at the lights in the Trispires, want to come with? It’s cool if you don’t, Nott and Yeza were planning on staying in today anyhow.”

“If you don’t mind me tagging along, then sure.”

He nods, again, and then stands, handing her a mug and pouring in still-steaming water from the kettle he had left on the stove.

His words are muffled as he sticks his head into a cabinet, but still understandable. “You want Emon Breakfast or one of Cad’s blends?”

“Breakfast, thanks.”

He hands her the mug a moment later, one of the ones that she recognizes as the set she had given Caleb for Midsummer, and dunks the teabag in.

It’s not too long after that that the rest of the house starts to wake up. Astrid doesn’t make her way out of their bedroom til nearly eleven, but Caduceus and Caleb are both up by eight, Nott and Yeza rising with Luc less than ten minutes after Caleb commandeers the kitchen table for studying. They end up eating breakfast on the couch in the living room, the sleepaway bed folded back into it, and she rejoins Caleb at the table when she’s done eating, spreading her notes across one portion and diving into the monotonous work of revising.

Studying passes in a blur of flashcards and boredom and frustration, but the lights she sees with Caleb and Wulf and Astrid are neat, and she returns to her own apartment after that, double-checking the locks and triple-checking the windows before finally, finally, falling asleep sometime around sunset.

She wakes up on Sunday morning, and dives back into studying.

Finals week passes in a blur.

She’s pretty confident that she nailed Yussah’s exam, at least – it would have been hard not to after working with Caleb and Nott and Bryce all semester, but she had been worried despite that, and it’s a relief to have it over with.

Her other exams – she feels less confident about them, but it’s fine enough.

Good enough to keep her scholarship, at the very least, and that’s what’s most important.

She videocalls Jessie every night, and gets treated to the sight of her girlfriend in dresses, shorts, and bathing suits, thoroughly enjoying the warmer weather of the coast.

She also gets treated to the sight of Fjord screaming at a seagull that stole his lunch while Jester cackles in the background, which is a spark of hilarity in an otherwise stressful week.

 

Winter break slides in with a wave of snow and ice that has her trapped in the apartment for two days, the roads blocked off and ice preventing her from running.

She spends most of those two days metaphorically clawing at the walls of the apartment, anger welling up within her – anger at the weather, irrational anger at Fjord and Jester for leaving, anger at her parents for sending her letters she’s never going to read.

Anger that she burns off when the ice finally melts and she runs, breath icy in the air as she sprints through city streets, waving at strangers and grinning at children as she brushes past.

She ends up at Pumats’, sometime around lunchtime, and sequesters herself in one of the armchairs by the windows, people watching and sipping absentmindedly at the hot chocolate Pumat – not Prime, one of the others, but she isn’t sure which one – had slipped her for free with a wink.

Her phone buzzes, once, and then again, in her pocket, and she swipes through messages with a growing smile.

**new dawn, new groupchat**

**nott the brave:** people of Zadash

 **nott the brave** : it’s only a week til new dawn

 **nott the brave** : let’s make some PLANS

 **yeza the less brave but still brave** : happy holidays!!!!

 **swoleregaurd** : nott did you set the nicknames again

 **swoleregaud** : also I thought new dawn was on Friday

 **nott the brave** : it’s only four days until new dawn so we REALLY need to make some plans

 **knife** : I like this nickname

 **knife** : also wulf n I r making that cake so like. Other people bring other stuff

 **not a furry** : the spongecake

 **not a furry** : nott what the f u c k is this nickname

 **nott the brave** : if you protest that just makes it worse

 **tea man, man me a tea** : I have this great recipe for stew saved, there’s a veggie version and then wulf, you could make meat to add in

 **tea man, man me a tea:** nott I don’t understand what this nickname is but it’s nice

 **swoleregaud** : is there

 **swoleregaurd** : is there a reason why this is being done over text

 **swoleregaurd** : you all literally live in the same apartment you could have just,,, talked about it,, and told me later –

 **like batman but cats** : critical thinking skills? In this house?

 

She huffs out a laugh, and when her phone starts to ring a moment later, she answers without looking at the caller ID.

“I think we should rent that muppet movie –“

“Finally.“

Her mind goes blank, and when that voice, in her ear, says her name –

Not her name.

Was never _her_ name.

She hangs up without a word, and sits heavily into the couch.

When the next call comes, she blocks the number with shaking fingers, and then dials a number that she does know, does recognize.

“Beauregard?”

Caleb sounds confused, and she can hear the raucous laughter of Astrid and Nott bouncing off the walls in the background.

“Can you come get me,” she says, tears held back by pure force of will as the panic starts to build.

“Beauregard,” he says, voice sharper, and the laughter in the background fades.

“I need you to come get me,” she repeats, and bites the edges of her fingernails into her palm as she tries to stop shaking.

“Beau, where are you?” It’s not Caleb’s voice that asks that, rather Caduceus’s, and that makes sense, she thinks, because Cad has a car, and Cad is good at calming people down –

“Pumats’,” she gets out, and then she’s standing, hands in a death grip around her phone as she meets to worried eyes of Pumat Prime who’s come out from behind the counter.

He leads her to the backroom, flicking off the lights, and takes the phone from her after she shoves it at him.

She places her head between her knees, drawing in as deep a breath as she can manage, and waits for something – someone – anything –

She hasn’t heard that name since she got kicked out.

It hadn’t even been on the letters that her parents have been sending, but she should have known –

It was only a matter of time.

Gods –

 

Pumat tells her the phone is ringing, again, and she tells him to hangup without looking at it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! im getting back in my Groove so a new chapter should be up on tuesday!!!!
> 
> eodwulf is nonbinary but uses he/him pronouns, and beau is trans
> 
> this world has magic, and magically assisted transitioning which im Developing to fit into the magic system but its cool as shit  
> warnings for transphobia and past child abuse and neglect in upcoming chapters
> 
> (there were a whole Bunch of errors in this oops. should be fixed now)


	8. Chapter 8

Pumat brings her a cup of lavender-mint tea as she waits for them to get there. It’s not her favorite, but it isn’t like she needs the caffeine right now, with this much panic and adrenaline coursing through her veins in equal measure.

She sips the tea with hands that she pretends aren’t shaking, staring at her phone, lying face down on the table across the room, where Pumat had placed it before leaving the back room.

She’s been back here before – Caleb had had an episode, months ago, when there had been a building fire a few blocks away, and Pumat had let them stow away back here to wait for Wulf to come and pick them up, to let Caleb blink off the blankness and void that his mind had shoved him into.

The Pumats are kind. She isn’t sure, all these months later, whether they’re arcane copies or just siblings with a fondness for jokes. It hardly matters either, way, but she’s always been curious.

Her parents had hated that, the curiosity. The questions.

Disrespectful, rude, terrible child, her father had said, spit flying into her face as he raged at her, at everything she tried to do right and then later at everything she did wrong just to get them to notice her.

The door creaks open, ten minutes of stewing in the building anger inside of her chest later, and she looks up to Caduceus and Caleb, Caduceus striding across the room to kneel beside where she’s pulled her knees up into the armchair in the corner.

Caleb follows behind him, slower, and she winces internally as she catches the flicker of pain that crosses his face.

The anger in her swells, at herself – at being weak enough to need them here, at not being able to handle her own shit, at hurting her friends through her own incompetence, at her parents for dragging her back into their shit.

At everything, really.

The tail end of what Caduceus had been saying filters through her ears, breaking her from her inward anger, and she glances up.

“-hey, and we thought we could maybe head down to the shop that’s set up on the corner of Fifth and Forbian, get some of those candied apples they’re always selling this time of year – some mulled wine, maybe, if you’re in the mood for that. Later, of course, not now – you can take all the time you need, Beau. We’re here –“

She clings to the steady stream of Caduceus’s words, his voice set in the particular stream of nonsense that he procures when talking any of them down – she’s heard him talking to Caleb and Wulf and Astrid like this, on bad days, to Nott when she’s too keyed up to sleep, to herself, before, when she had frozen at the sound of an argument while crossing the streets to campus.

His voice fades into the background, like this, but if it’s anything important he’ll repeat it and it doesn’t really matter, right now. Instead of listening, she looks up, and meets Caleb’s eyes from where he’s sat himself on the folding chair next to the table that her phone is resting on.

She points, and Caleb startles.

“I need to get rid of that.”

He blinks, glancing down, and narrows his eyes as he catches her phone start to ring again, the vibrations audible even from where she’s sitting.

She’s listened to it ring, every three minutes, for the past twelve.

It hadn’t gotten better, listening to it.

Caleb picks it up and cancels the call.

She watches his face fall as he catches sight of the missed calls and voicemails that she’s sure are clogging up her screen.

He looks back up, and nods at her, pocketing the phone.

She flinches as Caduceus brushes his knuckles against her knee, fine fur just barely tangible through the material of her jeans, and when she looks back at him he’s still giving her the same look that he had when he came it, eyes calm and understanding.

“Want to come back to the apartment?”

Across the room, Caleb nods. “Yeza brought home some extra candy canes from his holiday party, and we were going to watch _A New Dawn_ _’s Carol_.”

She laughs, and wipes under her eyes, smearing her eyeliner in the process.

Whatever.

They’ve all seen each other worse.

“The muppet one again?”

“ _Ja_. And Eodwulf was going to bake.”

She grins at that, and it’s less fake than she was worried it was going to be.

There will be time to figure this out later.

But Caleb’s apartment is warded to the hells and back. If there’s anywhere she wouldn’t be found, really, it’s there.

Caduceus offers her his hand, and she takes it, pulling herself up without putting too much weight on him.

Pumat waves at them as they walk out.

 

 

 

 

He ekes the story out in intervals during the lulls in the movie, later that night.

He’s known Beau for some time now, but it still surprised him the depths of fury that he feels over the way she’d been treated by her parents.

It’s later still that he’s pacing in the kitchen, Astrid and Wulf next to each other at the table. Beau’s in the living room, on the fold away bed, that Cad uses, and he’s already activated the silence ward in there so that the noise in the rest of the house wouldn’t bother her.

Nott and Yeza and Luc had gone to bed half an hour ago. Caduceus twenty minutes before that.

His joints ache as he paces, but the ache is a background hum to the words that pour out, half caught between Zemnian and Common as his wife and husband listen patiently from the table.

“-and, _g_ _ötter verdammt,_ what right – does anyone, what right does her parents, these people who were supposed to love her, where do they get off on kicking out a child into a world uncaring –“

He’s been on this tangent for nearly as long as Nott and Yeza have been gone from the room. He’s known Beau’s past for nearly as long as she’s known his own. The story of how her parents had kicked her out the moment they wouldn’t get imprisoned for doing so, because she hadn’t been the son they wanted, because she had been fierce and wild and wonderful and curious, and neither the son they had believed themselves to have or the meek daughter they would have taken.

His parent’s had made him a cake when he had come out to them, all those years ago.

So many of his memories are barbs on the edges of his mind. But never those ones.

Never.

“They were assholes, _liebling_. Still are. They didn’t have the right, and that didn’t stop them, because they were terrible people.”

Astrid raps her nails against the table, and shifts, one arm coming to loop around Wulf’s shoulder.

She laces a hand through the long hair at the back of his scalp, and he watches as his husband’s shoulders relax from where they had started to push up around his ears.

“You can’t change the past, Caleb.”

He sighs.

Sits.

“I know, _Sassa_.”

She grins at him at the nickname, and holds out her other hand.

He leans in a little closer, scooting his chair over, and she laces the fingers of that hand as well through the back of his hair.

He hums, and closes his eyes, mind settling a bit.

“But we can get her phone number changed, and make sure that no more letters reach the house. You said that the letters were getting to her through the university, right?”

He nods, eyes still closed. Below the table, he flexes one wrist, listening to the shift of bone beneath his skin.

“They sent them to Zeenoth, and Zeenoth forwarded them to her. They don’t have her actual address.”

“Then we tell Zeenoth not to do that, and get her number changed, and if things get worse we figure it out then. _Ja_?”

He nods, and Astrid takes her hand out from where she had been scratching the back of his scalp, patting him on the head.

“We’ll figure it out, Caleb. She’ll be okay.”

When he blinks his eyes open, calmer, Eodwulf grins at him, eyes soft.

He nods at the kitchen cabinet, still slightly ajar by the stove. “There’s still some cookies left, if you want some more. I saved them so that Yeza wouldn’t eat them all again.”

He’s up and reaching for them before Wulf even finishes, and signs thank you with his free hand as he grabs the Tupperware with the other.

They’ll be okay.

Besides – there’s still a few days before New Dawn. More than enough time to get this more settled, and to have a good start into the new year.

A fresh beginning, he thinks, and leans a little heavier into Wulf.

Wherever it takes them, they’ll walk together.

 

**Jessie**

 

 **Jessie** : hey

 **Jessie** : nott called me

 **Jessie** : do you need fjord and I to come back? Because we will, beau. I can always facetime my momma on New Dawn

 **Jessie** : I called the landlord and told him to look out for weird people poking around the apartment

 **Jessie** : and I know caleb offered to let you stay at his place for a couple of days and I think you should do that, ok? Because, technically, the apartment is really safe and stuff but caleb’s place might be safer because nott’s there and she’s good at fighting people I think and caleb has magic shit, right?

 **Jessie** : we’ll call you later

 **Jessie** : I hope ur ok

 

**Fjord**

 

 **Fjord** : beau, Jester and I can be back in two days if you need us to be

 **Fjord** : give us a call, alright?

 

**Nott**

 

 **Nott** : hey cad is making pasta

 **Nott** : for when u n caleb get back from the phone place

 **Nott** : wait

 **Nott** : shit this wont even reach you will it

 **Nott** : fuck

 

**Caduceus**

 

 **Caduceus** : you left your socks under the couch

 **Caduceus** : for when youre looking for them in the morning!

 **Caduceus** : wait caleb took you to the -

 **Caduceus** : does this message count as a ghost?

 **Caduceus** : Or maybe something else -

 

 

**Unknown Number**

 

 **Unknown** : We’ve been trying to reach you for nearly a month, now.

 **Unknown** : Your brother wants to meet you.

 **Unknown** : You could at least give us the dignity of refusing rather than ignoring us.

**The number you have tried to reach has been disconnected.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, folks! so, when i started this, i had no real idea where or what i was going or even doing with this fic. and, for the most part? i still don't. i have fun writing this, but from this point on chapters are going to be slower, as im pushing this to the backburner as something to write to cheer me up, and as something inbetween the other stuff I'm working on. but no worries! this fic will keep getting updated - just slower than before.
> 
> i have some pretty cool stuff in the works, so be on the lookout for that!
> 
> and hey, thanks as always for reading!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warnings for mentions of Ikithon, and the fuckery associated with him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as of 1/21/2020, all previous chapters have been edited! Just spelling and grammatical fixes, and some rephrasing of a couple things, as well as making sure all my timelines and continuity was alright. If you want to reread, you might spot a few new references to things! But you should get by fine if you don't have the time/want to do that.
> 
> also: not dead! yay! had a combination of mh problems and a terribly hard semester, but i'm back and in business

Changing her phone number was a simpler process than she had been worried it might be. Caleb was already weirdly familiar with it – well, not weirdly, she knows the reason why, and it’s the same reason why Astrid and Eodwulf and Caleb all spend their days panicking about their past coming back to bite them, but he’s still so familiar with it that her number is changed and her phone is back in her hand within a few hours.

“You can sleep at our place, until Jester and Fjord get back, all right? I don’t want you sleeping all alone in that apartment.” Nott pats her cheek with a light hand, and scrambles back off the stool where she’s sitting at the kitchen table, a spare chair pulled up just for her as the rest of them pick at leftovers.

“Caleb talked to Zeenoth, and they shouldn’t have your actual address – the letter came to the school, first, and Zeenoth just sent it along unknowingly, but just to be safe.”

Caleb, behind Nott in the kitchen, wrinkles his nose at the nickname but nods, commenting, “There are enough wards on this house that it’s practically invisible, to anyone looking.”

Beau scrubs a hand down her face, and nods silently, tracing a circle into the countertop before looking up.

“This is fucked up,” she states, face flat.

“Very,” Caleb agrees, his eyebrows furrowed – they’re almost always furrowed, she knows that, but they seem.

Extra? Maybe?

She’s not good at reading people on the best of days, facial expression wise – body language she’s got down pat, because body language is how she could tell when her dad was in a good mood or when he was looking for an excuse to start –

Bad thought, she thinks, and traces a circle again. But she’s good at reading Caleb and Nott. She knows them.

Caleb looks about as worried as he always does, but worried for her, specifically, right now, which is – weird.

She’s not super used to people worrying about her.

She knows – _she knows, alright_ – that Jessie and Fjord worry about her, and that Astrid and Wulf probably do, too, but she’s not used to it.

Still.

“Fucked up,” she repeats idly, and slides back from the table, chair making a slow screeching noise against the floor as she leans back.

The ceiling in the kitchen is splattered with flecks of a slightly lighter paint from the rest of the room.

From here, they almost look like stars. Actually – there’s a couple of constellations she can trace out. Probably intentional, then.

Probably from Caduceus. He’s the only one tall enough to reach the ceiling without standing on the table.

Her phone is sitting on the table.

She hasn’t texted Jester, yet. She should.

She should text Dairon, too, probably, and tell them why she missed training today.

So many shoulds.

But maybe - not text. Maybe she could call her?

She should call her.

She _will_ call her, she thinks suddenly, grabbing her phone with a hand she pretends isn’t shaking, clicking through her favorited contacts till she reaches her name, marked with a little star emoji on the end that she guesses Caleb had added, when he reprogrammed her phone.

She puts it up to her ear, and says quietly to Caleb, who’s still leaning against the cabinets - “I’m just going to call Jester.”

He nods, and she listens to the dial noise as he and Nott move silently out of the kitchen, giving her some relative privacy.

It rings, and rings, and rings, and she almost hangs up before finally -

“If this is spam, please know that I don’t give a shit!” Jester’s cheerful voice chimes in, and Beau half sobs and half laughs into the mic.

“Hey, Jessie. It’s me.”

She hears Jester gasp, on the other end. “Beau! Oh, thank gods - Nott texted me to give me the details, but she didn’t give me your new number and we’ve been so worried - are you okay?”

She laughs, again, something broken in the back of her throat.

“I don’t even know, Jes. I’m okay, I just… I hate them.”

“I know, Beau,” she says, softly, and gods, she can just imagine Jester twirling her hair anxiously as she talks, Fjord probably next to her listening in.

“Do you need us to come back early?”

She shakes her head, leaning forward, and drops her head against the table, still keeping the phone to her ear. “No, no, it’s okay, I’ll just stay with Caleb for a couple days. Spend time with your mom, I know you missed her.”

Jester hums, clearly upset, but she agrees carefully. “If you say so, Beau… I’m sorry this is happening. I love you. Fjord loves you, my mom loves you, Caleb loves you - whatever they say, whatever they want, it doesn’t matter. Your family is already around you, yeah?”

She nods, feeling a tear trickle down her face that she swipes away angrily. “Yeah. I - yeah. Love you too, Jess.”

Jester sighs, into the phone, and she can almost feel the force of the smile that she forces through the phone. “D’you wanna hear about how Fjord got stung by a jellyfish the other day and thought he was going to die even though it was just a little one?”

Beau laughs, more real this time. “Honestly? Yeah. Yeah I do.”

Jester rambles on for the next hour, about Fjord being stung, and then about a seagull she had seen, and an ant she had seen dragging a piece of ice cream cone, and how her mom got her a new skirt and how Fjord’s eaten enough ice cream over the past few days to drown a horse in, and listening is enough to get her out of the anger stewing in her head and into a better space. She says goodbye, when the conversation finally trails down, with a drawn-out ending, and hangs up with a small smile on her face.

Jester is good at cheering anyone up, but gods, she’s really let her worm her way into her heart.

She sets her phone down again, gingerly, and pulls back from the table, venturing into the living room and collapsing next to Caleb on the couch, leaning against him. She tucks her head against his shoulder, and he hums, readjusting as he keeps reading, both of them together in comfortable silence.

She closes her eyes, and meditates, at first, acknowledging thoughts as they come, avoiding the threads of red pain-anger-hurt at her parents, and thinks about Dairon, her calm voice, her steady hands, and thinks about the library, with its wood paneling and her apartment that’s clean and safe and hers…

She drifts off, like that, dozing against his shoulder, and doesn’t wake again until the sun is close to setting.

——

 

He spends most of the time Beauregard spends against his shoulder flipping through the textbook for Professor Yussah’s theory lecture next semester, one that he’s already fairly familiar with from this past semester - he had never used this textbook, under his previous tutelage, but this book is arguably better, one of the newer ones published by Seanor Wiles, the head of teaching, currently, in the mainstream Soltryce Academy after -

After Ikithon had been removed. For - well, for many things, but mostly murder, and human experimentation, and abuse of minors.

He had been. He isn’t sure he can call him a teacher, even if that was the language he had used for himself, forcing them to call him Magister, Master, Magister Ikithon, Master Ikithon…

He tears his mind away from the start of that spiral, and trails back to the textbook in front of him. Seanor Wiles is a brilliant kind man, that he had met once, a few months out of the hospital, someone appointed by the Arcana Pansophical board to take control of the school. Vouched for by Archmage Yurek, even, the current head of the organization - but. Anyways.

It’s a good textbook. Clear, concise, with plenty of both theoretical thought examples and practical problems. There’s a lot of math, involved with arcane theory, the most with transmutation and evocation, but still plenty involved in nearly every other discipline. The math for conjuration magic - he shudders, a bit. Teleportation without planar links to base the math on and solidify against is something that takes higher level dimensional calculus to really model. Conjuring objects from ambient matter does, as well. He knows the math, still, but it’s vastly beyond the scope of this class.

He’s never been the most interested in conjuration, really. That’s more Astrid’s realm of expertise, and it’s still vaguely the realm she works in now, doing the accounting for the greenhouse, for Wulf and Caduceus, and teaching students in the conjuration program here. Enough of a commitment to the university where she’s still ostensibly an employee - technically, she’s the professor of one of the online conjuration theory classes - without having to commit to fully having a set class time or office hours. A better fit, for when she’s sick or not up to dealing with people in person, and she records her lectures and explanations in the silence booth at the library on Fridays, so that they’re ready to be sent out for next week - he’s very proud of her. He loves her so much.

(She’s better at math than anyone else he knows.)

Eodwulf and Astrid had actually graduated from their previous educational venture, with real, legitimate degrees. He had - not.

Not his fault, and he knows that, but he worked to get his G.E.D, the summer after he got out of the hospital, and then had eventually ended up here, working once again towards a degree. It’s nice, here, in Zadash, though. Nicer professors. A slightly more manageable course load.

Better accommodations by far, he thinks wryly as Frumpkin jumps up to curl onto the arm of the couch. Soltryce, at least the Soltryce he attended, years ago, would have never let Frumpkin attend classes with him. Ikithon wouldn’t have, at least. He doesn’t know about the rest of the school.

He never got much experience in the normal side of things. Mostly just Ikithon’s hellish merry-go-round. He supposes he could ask Astrid and Wulf - they spent a year at Soltryce, after everything, to finish their degrees, while he was in the hospital - but quite honestly, he’s not sure if he wants to bring up memories that way.

He needs to grab his laptop, so he can start editing the recitation sheet mockups Yussah had emailed to him, but Beauregard is still fast asleep against his shoulder, and he can’t move now, can he?

He closes the book, quietly, and sets it on the table, mentally telling the wards to dim the lights even further as he leans his head over Beau’s, Frumpkin slipping down to settle in his lap, purring and kneading against the fabric of his shirt.

Just - a little nap, he thinks, blinking heavily. So he doesn’t disturb Beau.

Just a little one, he thinks again, and then closes his eyes completely as he drifts off.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading! feel free to leave a comment, as always. feed the monster that dwells within me


	10. New Dawn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> waves! enjoy a holiday fluff chapter in February, because who says the cheer can't last all year! hope you're having a wonderful beginning to your year!

 

The grocery store on the day before New Dawn is, potentially, the worst place she’s ever been in. She’s being dramatic, but seriously – it’s jam packed in the already tiny grocery store, and she’s bumped into six people so far.

The constant droning of carols over the loudspeakers isn’t helping matters, easier.

But - Caduceus had needed to grab just a couple more things, and she had volunteered to go, because she had seen the way Nott and Yeza were starting to go blurry at the edges, trying to wrap presents while Luc was asleep without waking him up, so she had volunteered to go with Cad and take the kid with her - the kid, who’s sitting in the body of the grocery cart and bouncing his little hands against the wires, chanting “Ce-re-al! Ce-re-al!”

Caduceus, for the third time, sighs, his head dipping as he stares carefully at Luc. “We already have cereal, Luc. You ate some this morning.”

He pouts and bangs the cart harder. “Want! Cereal!”

“We can’t buy that kind, Luc, you’re allergic to honey.”

Luc’s voice shifts to a whine, and he points harder at the box. “But there’s a bee on it - look, he’s so lonely, he wants to be with all the other cereals.”

Carefully and silently, she thuds her head against the candle of the cart.

She loves Luc. She does.

He’s just… one of the most precocious four-year old’s she’s ever met.

Caleb’s influence, probably. Or Astrid. Wulf.

Functionally, the little guy has five parents, and he’s so, so loved, but all of the people he’s surrounded with are _weird_ , and she thinks that lovingly, but it has lent itself to a situation where this four-year-old has opinions about Plants and Bees and Food Items that he’s never even eaten.

Luc pouts, again, but stops pointing at the box, crossing his tiny arms. 

Beau glances away from the near-empty shelves of cereal - to give him a little credit, there’s only one of those boxes still left on the shelf, this late in the day - and nods to Caduceus.

“Cad, what else is on the list?”

The firbolg looks up from the list, in his own _terrible_ sylvan handwriting, his eyes wrinkling as he smiles. “Just need a couple more things, we’ll be done soon. Could you take the cart and see if they have any stale bread left for stuffing?”

She nods, holds out a solemn hand for Luc, who high fives her gleefully, and turns the cart carefully, making a car noise with her lips as they move. Luc claps his hands, as she pushes the cart down the aisle, towards the bakery section. There are a few loaves, yet, leftover from the week, and she grabs the ones marked down in price after carefully inspecting them and the allergen list to make sure everything is good, and she nestles them down next to Luc in the cart.

She knows, what allergens people in the apartment have, which is why she knows that the free cookie she grabs and slips to Luc is fine for him to eat.

It’s been a long hour, here. He deserves it.

(She eats one herself, too.)

They find Cad again in the dairy aisle, staring pensively between a jug of soymilk and oatmilk, before finally picking up the oatmilk and turning to them with a slow smile on his face, having already noticed they were there.

“Oh good, you got the bread. That should be everything, then - Luc, do you need more oranges?”

The kid eats a clementine every single day. She’s heard him call them tambourines twice.

He thinks they’re tangerines, but mixes up the words, and it’s _so funny_ -

Luc grins, brilliantly, and throws his hands up. “Tambourines!”

It’s hard to muffle the snort of laughter, for both of them.

—

They sit down to dinner late that night, Luc already half asleep and dripping mashed potatoes off his spoon and onto his plates as the adults chatter around him.

Sitting back in his chair, Caleb takes a careful survey of the room, a rare and true smile fitting comfortably around the corners of his mouth. Dinner was wonderful, as most of Caduceus’s dinners are, and he’s full, both with potatoes and with the love he feels brimming up for his family around him.

The holiday, like all holidays are, is still tinged with the bittersweet memories of his parents, but it feels less like he’s drowning in them, this year, in painful memories, and more like he’s built a place for himself where those memories can sit comfortably among the joy of his present.

Or… something like that. That was a little esoteric, even for him.

Luc blinks, heavily, and his head dips down for a second before snapping up again, and he carefully sets the spoon down.

“Time for bed, kiddo?” Nott pushes back from the table, and stands, reaching to haul Luc into her arms as he tucks his head against her shoulder, half-asleep. She nudges the chair back under the table, so she can get out of the already cramped kitchen, and carries him into the hallway and out of sight.

He can hear the water start to run, a minute later, and then another minute later the soft closure of Luc’s bedroom door.

Nott returns, in fast order, and sits back at the table, sighing happily. “Well, with him off to bed, we can put the presents out. I put one of the jingle bells on his door so we can hear if he gets up during the night.”

“If he asks me in the morning how the presents got here without me noticing, considering I was sleeping on the couch, should I just… lie?” Beau asks, awkwardly, poking her head out to glance at the living room.

“Gonna be honest, he’s probably going to be too excited to think about the logistics,” Yeza says cheerily, slipping up from the table to drop his plate in the sink. “Beau, want to help decorate? Caduceus bakes, Caleb and Astrid and Eodwulf usually help Nott finish wrapping presents and gossip -”

“Hey!” Astrid mock gasps, and grins as Yeza flaps a hand at her.

“- gossip like old townspeople, the lot of them, leaving me on decorations - which! Is not the brightest idea, we’ve had, because I’m the shortest person here other than Luc - but if you help, we can get the garlands up near the ceiling, where they’re supposed to be.”

Beau agrees with a wry grin, and the two depart for the larger bedroom, pulling decorations out from their new home in the wardrobe of holding, and proceeding to deck the halls, so to speak.

He and his partners busy themselves with wrapping the last of presents around the kitchen table, Nott gossiping, as she’s prone to, about the latest drama in her chemistry study group chat and the even _more_ interesting drama, she proclaims, of Luc’s daycare friend group, which has apparently experienced a shakeup of late due to some upsets during the pirate play time, because Luc “retired” from his role as captain, so now they’re sailing adrift on the seas.

He’s fairly sure that Nott makes up stories to tell them specifically for New Dawn’s Eve. Luc’s daycare stories are never quite as dramatic as they are this time of year.

But the presents get wrapped, by eleven, the last of them - not a large amount, by some families’ standards, perhaps, but they wrap everything individually. Luc, of course, has the largest amount of presents, because everyone pitches in to buy him as many as possible - that kid is growing up loved, and maybe just a little bit spoiled rotten, he thinks fondly - but the rest of them have a small pile each, from the other members of the household, and they had all made sure that Beau was included in that, since she was staying with them for the holiday.

That plan had been made before they had known - well, it would have been hard to predict what had happened, exactly, with Beauregard’s parents. The original plan had been that Beau would have come over in the morning, and they would have been free to wrap her presents tonight, away from her wandering eyes.

This is why Yeza is making her help decorate. Usually Nott and Yeza gossip, and wrap, and he helps decorate with Astrid and Wulf, but they all willingly switched tonight to snatch a little privacy to wrap her presents.

A little convoluted, but very much worth it.

She’s going to be happy with her presents, he thinks.

He hopes.

No, he knows. He knows her tastes well enough that these are things she’ll love.

—

Morning dawns - ha, that’s funny, she thinks blearily, as she wipes grit out of her eyes - with the light weight of a child, who’s sitting literally on her legs, staring at her with wide eyes.

“Beau! Beau! Beau!” He chants, under his breath, and she sits up carefully, waking up more.

“Wha-” She gets out, before she sees, in order, the presents carefully piled around the small symbol of the Archeart, hung on the wall opposite the windows, that’s just starting to reflect the sunlight pouring into the room as the sun rises, curtains flung wide open, and remembers, quite suddenly, exactly where she is and what day it is.

“Wake up time! Presents time!” Luc sings, and he jumps off her lap and sprints through the hall to the other bedrooms, chanting, “Presents! Presents! Presents!” The sound repeats and quiets as he races up and down the hall, pounding on doors as he passes.

She sighs, once he’s out of earshot, rolls herself off the couch, and starts up the kettle.

She has a feeling everyone’s going to need a lot of tea.

The house wakes up swiftly - a little too swiftly, she thinks, so everyone probably had alarms set for sunrise so they wouldn’t keep Luc waiting too long - and in short order, they’re caffeinated with tea and seated in a circle around the piles of presents in the living room, a process of organizing that she grows more and more emotional about as she realizes she has an actual pile of presents.

She had - holidays, growing up, had been stilted more than anything. Her parents had gotten her presents, because usually her grandparents had been over, before they died when she was little, and then it was friends, or business partners - but the presents had never been anything she wanted.

For a long time, her parents had gotten her books on accounting that she had pretended to enjoy under their heavy stares.

It’s weird still, getting presents that she likes.

Luc opens his presents first, to capture his small attention span, and a few snapped pictures later he’s sprinting around the hallways with a long cape draped around his shoulders and a dragon plush zooming through the air, and the adults settle in after a round of wrapping paper clean up to open their smaller piles in a more - reserved manner, that doesn’t involve flinging paper around like it’s covered in acid.

Nott and Yeza and Caduceus all open their presents before the circle turns around to her - a matching set of vintage chemistry and alchemy books, for the two of them, that pairs very well with the novelty socks she had gotten them, covered in depictions of acid vials and buttons.

Caduceus’s presents are, again, themed - he gets new gardening gloves, printed with mushrooms, and a set of incense - for greenhouse use only, is stuck with a label maker and a smiley face on the box - and then a pajama set, with the same mushroom motif. She had gotten him matching slippers, that she had lucked upon a month ago, and he puts them on immediately, flexing his toes with a pleased expression.

And then it’s her turn, and before she’s even fully aware of it she’s staring, awestruck, at what’s in her lap.

Because - this is an _actual_ copy of the original code of the Cobalt Soul.

It’s dated, too - thin, quilled script details _836 P.D. - Zadash Branch_.

_Holy shit._

“Holy shit,” she whispers, and glances up at where Astrid and Caleb and Wulf are all smiling at her with almost identical expressions.

“Oh, my gods,” she says, and she carefully traces a finger over the glass.

It’s already framed.

“I’m going to hang this. I’m going to - this is the _best thing_ I’ve ever gotten, oh my _gods_ -”

Caleb grins, brighter, and says with a chuckle, “It wasn’t the easiest thing to find, but we thought you would like it. The rest of the presents are - admittedly, a little less star-dazzling, but. Still good, _ja?_ ”

She opens the other ones, with shaking hands, and stifles a full out snort at the new arm wraps and a pack of cheap pens and mechanical pencils wrapped all nicely. She’s constantly losing pens.

“Fuck, you guys…” She swipes at her eyes - she’s not crying, she’s not - and smiles. “Wow. Just… wow.”

“Happy New Dawn, Beau.” Astrid pats her knee, awkwardly, and then gives a little “Oh -” as Beau leans in to give her a tight hug.

“Really, thank you,” she says, muffled into Astrid’s shoulder, and then sits back, carefully tucking the framed manuscript up on the table, away from child hands and clumsy feet.

Astrid, then, is next, and it’s honestly hysterical how all of her gifts are themed to math.

No, like - seriously - Yeza gets her a portable whiteboard, and Nott gets her fancy whiteboard markers, and Caduceus gets her a necklace with a stylized equation turned into a work of art - which Astrid nearly manages to get tangled in her curls, as she’s trying to slide it on - and Wulf gets her math patterned socks, covered in the same equations she uses every class, and Caleb gets her - well.

Caleb, when his present comes around, turns beet red, and whispers something in Astrid’s ear, who snorts.

“I have been… informed,” Astrid says, dryly, “That this gift requires Wulf’s to be opened first, so I will refrain for the moment.”

Beau had gotten Astrid a pair of scissors shaped like a sword, which go over swimmingly.

Wulf, then is next - and his presents, like so many others in the room, are themed again, this time after plants (flowers, specifically) and Wulf receives a fake flower crown, floral button-down, floral-patterned maxi skirt, and a succulent in a skull-shaped pot - From Caduceus, obviously - before making his way to the present from Caleb.

Caleb, who is still beet red in the face.

Astrid and Wulf open theirs at the same time, and both let out identical gasps of appreciation as they lift out thick scarves - a little wonky, she thinks, but the colors are beautiful and the pattern is more complex than just simple knitting, intricate patterns worked in and out of the weave of the fabric.

Astrid immediately wraps hers around her neck, but Eodwulf stares at it for a moment longer, eyes wide.

“ _Liebling_ , did you knit these?”

Caleb blushes even deeper, if that’s possible, and stares resolutely at the ceiling as he says, quietly, “Not… knit, necessarily. But Calianna let me borrow her pocket loom, over the summer, and taught me some tricks -”

His neck words are buried by Eodwulf’s hair as the half-elf dives into him, hugging him tightly as Caleb gives a soft squeak and then relaxes into him.

Wulf refuses to release his husband, after that, so Caleb opens his presents while still pressed into him, Astrid having moved to now be curled up against his other side on the couch.

Caleb receives no less than three pairs of socks, from her, Yeza, and Nott - all patterned with cats, books, and then one pair with both books and cats - and a set of three reference manuals for transmutation, conjuration, and abjuration magic, from the rest of his partners.

And after that, finally, is breakfast, and Luc’s returned from lining his toys up in a little line down the hallway to sit at his chair at the table, all the eaves expanded to accommodate them all as they feast themselves on Caduceus’s baking and Eodwulf’s breakfast quiche.

And looking around?

This is a good family, she thinks, heart warm.

She’s glad she was able to be here.

She’s glad for so many things.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This marks the tenth chapter of this fic, and also the last chapter for a while to use this split perspective model! For the next few, at least, I'll be going back to Caleb and Beau chapter arcs, with just one narrator per chapter. Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment!!!!!  
> Seriously - I know it's hard to remember to comment, especially on fics that you've already read, but I love each and every comment I get and they really make me happy! Treat Your Local Author Today!


	11. BONUS: ESSEK

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! it's my birthday! this is incredibly self indulgent! Also it's internation fanworks day! what a coincidence!
> 
> essek pov! chronic pain! chronic sleepiness and fatigue! screams!
> 
> hope you enjoy but honestly this is more for me than anyone else (other than mossy! this is also for a moss! love u friend!)

He knows, from the moment he wakes up, that today’s going to be a bad day. Not one of his worst days, no, because he doesn’t have the too-familiar taste of blood on his tongue from where he’s bitten his cheek upon waking in pain, but it’s still a bad day, because the instant he wakes he shudders from the pain resonating down his back, little arcs of fire nipping at his hips and shoulders and spine that settle to a dull ache as he lays there, staring blankly at the ceiling.

It takes more effort than it should to get his arm to move enough to check his phone. Forty-five minutes until he needs to wake up, properly. (The time he told himself he needs to be up by. It’s still much later than he ever would have let himself sleep, a few months ago,)

Those forty-five minutes - well, he had started his trance earlier than usual, the day before, because he had been planning on using that time to reorganize his fabric, before he had started working on his latest commission - he only had to hem the pants and replace a few buttons before he could package it and send it off - but.

But, he thinks, today might be - a not moving day.

Maybe. He has forty-five minutes to figure that out, if he puts off the fabric organization.

Exhaustion tugs at his bones, adding to the discomfort, and he blinks, heavily, still staring at the ceiling.

He should get up.

Take his meds, write down some to-do lists, put on his braces, eat breakfast.

He should -

He flexes his toes, testing, and winces at the feeling and the noise of the joints grinding.

Maybe… he’ll just close his eyes for a few more minutes. Let his mind warm up to being awake.

Just a couple more.

 

He wakes up, again, when his phone alarm starts up, melodic strings playing loudly in the silence of his room. He groans, and reaches for his phone, shoulder aching as he hits the snooze button, and the music stops.

Right. Another nap.

Directly after trancing.  Wonderful. Totally not concerning at all.

He should write that down, he notes sourly, and he cautiously pulls himself up so that he’s more sitting than lying down, pressing his head hard against a pillow for a moment before finally sliding his legs off the side of the bed.

Right, he thinks, legs dangling an inch off the ground. Time to get up.

Time to get up, he thinks harder, willing himself to move through the fog of pain and tiredness. 

It takes another three minutes of him yelling in his head, and of his alarm going off the second time for him to finally muster up the courage to stand, feet touching the floor lightly as he chants the incantation for his levitation spell under his breath. The spell, more than it had - before, before all of this… newer trouble - takes it out of him, and he hovers there for a moment, eyes drifting closed, as he waits out the wave of exhaustion, holding onto the spell with more effort than he ever used to have to use.

Okay.

He forces his eyes open again, picking up his head from where he had started to nod down, and floats gently across the room to his desk, toes dragging just barely against the carpet.

He used to be able to float a full four or five inches off the ground, when he wanted to, but lately it’s taken too much effort to justify even doing this for more than just getting around his house. 

 

Right. Okay. He’s up.

What did he - right. Meds.

He flicks open the day-marked container, and dumps the scant handful of pills into his palm, grabbing his water bottle, still half-full from the day before, off his desk and washing them down with a grimace. That’s done, then.

Potion, next, and that one he downs with even more of a grimace, the taste bitter on his tongue.

Breakfast, next, then, as much as he hates the idea of food right now. He pushes the curtain blocking his bed off from the rest of the room aside with a shaking hand, and trails across the mismatched patchworks of the carpets lining his apartment till he’s nearly bumping against the counter. He grabs onto it, lightly, and drops the spell, feet touching against the ground.

He breathes through the blossoming ache in his hips, and uses the counter as a support as he edges around to grab oat milk from the fridge and cereal from it’s cabinet, bowl and spoon plucked from the drying rack next to the sink. He foregoes the taller chairs set against the counter for the couch, and he sets himself down with a sigh, bowl balanced in his lap.

He’s not - super aware of finishing the cereal, but he apparently does it, because by the time he’s fully awake, as much as he ever is, now, the bowl is empty and his hands are shaking less.

His phone, against his leg in his pocket, buzzes, and he slides it out, flicking his screen to bring up the message. 

**Caleb:** _Hallo_ , Essek

**Caleb:** We still alright for lunch today?

A smile tugs at his lips, and he raises the phone to his lips as he says, tonelessly, “Meeting at Pumat’s?”

The type appears, after a delay, on the screen, and he checks it over before hitting send.

Caleb, in his typical fashion, sends back a simple “Ok,” followed by three emojis of a cat with its head cocked.

Right, then. Almost forgot about that.

Two hours till he needs to leave.

Just enough time to… do… something.

Anything.

 

By the time he has to leave, he’s managed to hem the pants, at least, invisible prick stiches tacking up the already-serged edge to hide the thread. Only managed that.

But. Better than nothing.

Getting ready to go outside means a decision, and he toys with it in his mind as he carefully pulls on his clothes, ignoring the flare of pain as he bends over to grab his socks. Chair or crutches, chair or crutches, chair or crutches -

The decision makes itself for him when he nearly falls on his ass, putting on his socks, and he pulls his chair out from the corner in the living room it lives in with a careful tug of a mage hand, lowering himself into it and relaxing as the cushioning charms take hold.

He’s enchanted this chair himself, in the early days of this, when he was still holding desperately onto trying to still make it to classes and his work, but the runes and charms on the chair have held steady even while his own power ebbed with the fatigue of - whatever the fuck is going on with him.

He’s not really sure. His parents aren’t sure, not that they talk to him much anymore. His doctor isn’t sure, not yet, but. They’re working on it.

He’s… managing. You could call it that. It doesn’t feel like managing, but it could be worse.

He purses his lips, as he starts to wheel out of his apartment, door slamming shut without a touch behind him. 

It could be much worse.

 

He hears Caleb before he sees him - a good sign that the other man is having a good day - as he enters the Cafe, Zemnian-accented words finishing up a conversation with the Pumat manning the counter before he turns, eyes brightening as he spots him.

“Essek, hey,” He calls out, and he meets him at the table, Frumpkin hopping up to curl on the third chair. “So I read this article, recently -”

The conversation proceeds from there, as Caleb rambles on about transmutation theory, hands gesticulating wildly. Frumpkin, halfway through, jumps onto his lap, and he sinks sore hands into the warm fur with a welcome sigh, Frumpkin’s weight and warmth seeping through the material of his pants to soothe some of the ache in his legs. 

They finish lunch, and Essek finds Caleb’s hand, careful, on his shoulder, as he leans in, to ask, hushed, “Do you need anything, friend?”

His eyes are as earnest as always, and Essek covers his hand with his own. “I’m alright, Caleb. But I appreciate it.”

A small smile crosses his face, and he pets Frumpkin with his free hand. “Tell the den I say hello, yes?”

Caleb smiles back, pulling away after patting his shoulder. “Of course, of course. You are welcome to visit, if you have the energy, one day.”

His smile grows a little fixed, on his face, and Caleb backtracks, “Not - not like - you ah. You know what I mean, I -”

He sighs, but smiles again, still genuine. “It’s okay, Caleb. I’m not - just a little on edge, today. You know how it is.”

“I… _ja_. I know how it is.”

Caleb leaves, a moment later, making his way to his next class, and he sags in his wheelchair, stirring his tea idly.

He misses, sometimes, when he and Caleb would spend hours together in the library.

They still could, he supposes, but -

It’s not the same. But they still could. He needs to remember that.

 

He goes home, directly after that, tired after just the short excursion out, and closing the door to his apartment is enough of a relief that he can feel the tension dripping from his shoulders. 

Right.

He slides the chair back into the corner, and sits himself in his wheeled desk chair, which - functionally, it’s also a wheelchair, he supposes, because it’s a chair that has wheels, but it’s easier to move around his apartment in it because the wheels go 360 degrees. Not the most stable, of course, but more than good enough to use to slide himself from his storage closet to his cutting table, from his desk, still covered in transparent pattern pieces, to the table that holds his sewing machine and serger. It still takes too long than it should, to fix the buttons, but before the sun sets he’s finished the pants and folded them into their packaging, address written in neat type on the top.

He’ll drop this off at the post office tomorrow. 

He tries, after that, to pick his way through a textbook in Undercommon, shipped from home from his parents, but before he’s even aware of it coming he feels the exhaustion tugging at him again, and his eyes drift closed once, twice, three times, his head bobbing as he tries to snap himself awake before he finally gives up and lets go, the sensation of spinning and falling too-familiar and scary still.

When he wakes up, he feels more tired than he had before the impromptu nap, and his legs ache in a way that speaks to awkward positioning. He stares, for a long handful of minutes, at the wall, yelling at himself in a way that’s too familiar.

Get up.

Get up, get up, get up. Move your legs. Move your toes, even.

Get _up_.

 

He stands, eventually and shakily, and uses the wall to balance on his way to the bathroom, and then, freshly damp and warm, on his way to bed, shutting the curtain again. His bed is - something he’s always had, because his joints have been fucked enough to necessitate trancing in one since he was a young teenager, but it’s become more and more of a bed, recently, as the sleeping had started. The not sleeping, too. The exhaustion. 

It’s late, now. Late enough that he feels less guilty about letting himself trance, now. 

(He isn’t sure what the worth is in trancing, anymore, when he can and will just sleep the whole night through, but Dr. Hydris - Well. He always says to call him Kashaw, that the formalities just get in the way - told him to try and keep his routine as normal as possible, to keep trancing for now. But he’s dreaming, still, even during the trance, and the dreams are messy and fuzzy and don’t help the panic and fog he feels clouding his vision upon waking.)

But he lays down, and he puts on the music that Caleb recommended, and he lets his mind blank out and his eyes drift shut as he meditates.

(Halfway through the trance, he feels his head bob as he falls into sleep, and he lets it happen.)

 

The morning after that is more of the same, and life continues on.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been having the worst flare i've had in my life for over a week now and i'm Really Feeling It so this is. written from the heart. While I am not a wheelchair user or someone who deals with narcolepsy, I do experience chronic pain and mobility problems, and I hope that I've represented things accurately. Please reach out to me if you have any concerns about my writing!  
> (and happy birthday to me!)

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is @moonbyrd!
> 
> please comment if you have anything to say, anything to not say, or just have a string of emojis.
> 
> Heck Yeah.


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